In the Field: Elliott Sadler

As a friend of Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s for a number of years now, being very close to him, and talking to him a lot as he's made the decision to go to Hendrick Motorsports next season, I'm very happy for him.

I think he feels like he's made a good decision, and that's good.

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But what I feel some people are leaving out is there's a real good driver looking for a job for 2008. Kyle Busch is an amazing driver and he is going to be a hot commodity for the 2008 season.

I know Ray, our owner here at Evernham Motorsports, has been very outspoken about getting him to come over here and we would love to have him as a teammate.

We're looking to expand Evernham Motorsports, and we would love to have somebody of a Kyle's caliber come and drive on our race team.

Junior making the call on where he's going closes one chapter, but it opens another. Kyle's only 22 years old and he's got a lot of great racing ahead of him, so whoever lands him will feel like they've done a great job for their team.

We're going to try. We're going to try and push for him to come over here and join the team of Kasey [Kahne], Scott [Riggs] and myself. We want to expand this to a four-car team and I think he'd be a great addition at Evernham Motorsports, if that's where he chooses to come.

But when you get back to Junior, what some people don't think about, whether it's the fans or the media, is that as a kid growing up and being a fan of this sport, whether it was racing go-karts or racing Late Model Stocks; we have dreams.

Everyone has dreams of what they want to be when they grow up -- and us, being racers -- you just want to be a champion. One way or another, you want to be a Nextel Cup champion, be successful and win races.

As careers go forward, guys are going to try to make decisions to put themselves in the right situation to make that happen.

That doesn't mean you're guaranteed anything -- but you feel like you want to make those decisions to put yourself in the best situation to win championships.

I think he feels like he's done that, because he's gotten with what he feels is one of the best teams in NASCAR. Those guys are going to stay on top and he feels that.

He feels like he's got a great chance at winning the championship with them.

If there's more pressure getting into equipment like that, with all the expectations that come with it, that's fine if you know there are more opportunities coming with that pressure.

When I made the change to come from Robert's [Yates] over to Evernham's to be Kasey's teammate that put pressure on me because I knew Kasey won six races and six poles last year.

But that's fine. If I've got the opportunity to win all that, you welcome that pressure. So if it's going to put more pressure on him to win a championship, now that he's at Hendrick, I think he'll welcome that every day of the week, as long as he thinks he's got a good opportunity to do so.

So as a friend of his, I'm very happy for him.

I could tell during the press conference that a load had been lifted off his shoulders and it was hard for him to even fight back the smile he had.

I know he's happy about working with Rick Hendrick, and I've even heard him make the comment that Rick is not even like a boss to him -- he's more like a friend.

They've known each other for a long time, since Dale was a teenager, so I think that's very comfortable for him, being a racecar driver and driving for a guy like that.

That counts big time. I was able to talk to Junior about this a couple of weeks ago, at his house. He talked so highly of Hendrick, as a friend -- not that he'd get a chance to drive for him as a boss -- but that he'd been a big friend of his daddy and his family.

Rick is a person that not only Dale Jr., but other people in this garage -- and I'm one of them -- have called him for advice.

We didn't call to ask him to drive his cars, but to say, "Hey, I might have this opportunity, what do you think of it?" He is just that type of person, an amazing man who's so down to earth and so fair to everybody and who understands where this sport has been and where it's going.

He would love to give you free advice any time and he's just a guy you can trust. He looks out for you genuinely -- not just looking out for himself.

So I think Dale Jr. is very comfortable to go drive for him and I feel they've got everything straight with a handshake.

Rick's a man you can do that with. Some people in this sport, you better get something in writing; and there are some people you can do it with a handshake and the rest of it will take care of itself -- and Rick is one of those people.

And that's why Junior felt he was comfortable to go over there.

I think it's big news for our sport, to put the two biggest names: Earnhardt and Gordon, on the same team.

I think it's going to be a good relationship for them because they're both nice guys, they both already like each other; and I think it's just going to make both of them better, because they're both going to try to out-run each other every week.

They'll both have the same equipment, so it should make for some great racing, for the fans and all of us.

They're definitely going to be the powerhouse team for a long, long time, I think -- at least as long as both of them continue racing full-time.

I think they're definitely going to make other teams try to raise their level of play to be competitive each and every week.

I'll tell you something else, and this comes from someone who's had to dodge a beer can shower or two that came out of a Gordon and Earnhardt battle on the racetrack.

I hope they'll be able to show that you can be friends and still be good competitors. I hope maybe the fans will see some of that.

But Earnhardt said it himself in his press conference. The line is still going to be drawn in the sand and he's still going to want to out-run Jeff every week.

He wants his fans to be able to have bragging right on Gordon's fans, and vice versa for Jeff; so I still think they can work under the same umbrella and still try to out-run each other every week -- just like Jeff and Jimmie [Johnson] do now.

But we'll see. We do know they are great friends -- just like Jeff and Dale Sr. were. They were even business partners, but they still let racing be racing -- and that's what racers are going to do.

Racers are going to race on the racetrack, and they're going to race each other hard and try to beat each other -- we all are, because that's what we do.

I think some fans are going to be OK with it and some fans are going to be very upset about it. But fans need to understand as a kid, growing up in this sport, all you're asking for is an opportunity to win championships and that's all Dale Jr. wants.

He's gone where he feels he has the best opportunity to do that, and you can't hate somebody for that.

Elliott Sadler, now in his ninth full season in the Cup Series, shares weekly with NASCAR.COM readers life on the road through staff writer Dave Rodman.