In the Field: E. Sadler

Last week I got to participate in something I've never had a chance to do with any of the race teams I've driven for, and that was to take part in Gillett Evernham Motorsports' annual sponsor summit.

It was a pretty interesting event that was held over two days in North Carolina, and it was a lot of fun. I really like doing those kinds of events, with sponsors, away from the racetrack.

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It's cool for me because you get to meet all the different people that you represent every Sunday at a different area than the racetrack, where we're always busy and have so many different responsibilities that you can't spend the time with folks that you'd like to.

So I really enjoy it -- and I really enjoyed my first one with Ray and George's team.

It's like anything else, if you get it on a personal level, it puts a whole different spin on things. I'm one of those guys who wants to know who I'm representing every week -- whether you're my primary sponsor or one of our associate sponsors.

Whether you're involved with a company that's represented on our Dodge racecars, or you're involved directly with me through a personal services contract, I want to know the people behind the scenes -- the people behind the logos -- and what they stand for and believe in, because that helps me do my job of representing them better.

So when I got to meet these people face-to-face, whether it was at a dinner, or a golf outing or a ride-and-drive -- whatever it was that Gillett Evernham did at its sponsor summit, I got a better understanding of what they wanted out of racing, and what they wanted out of Elliott Sadler.

So doing functions like that is good for me.

Over the two days we had all kind of responsibilities split up among all the drivers.

On one day, I went on a golf outing with a group of about 30 people. The next day, they had a summit with a lot of b-to-b -- business to business -- opportunities among all the partners.

That was set up with an address on the state of Gillett Evernham Motorsports and NASCAR right now, what's good about marketing and what's bad about marketing in this day and time.

I did a ride-and-drive one day with about 40 people, and we had a couple big dinners, including one at The Speedway Club at Lowe's Motor Speedway, with 50 or 60 people.

Everything we did was split up between Scott [Riggs], Kasey [Kahne] and myself. So it was a couple days of meeting the people on the inside of the companies we represent and getting to know the ins and outs of what they're all about; and that was a lot of fun with me. (Continued)