In the Field: Elliott Sadler

Last weekend the Chase for the Nextel Cup opened up at New Hampshire, and it was like that opened the book on some of the same questions we get every year: How hard do you race, and how hard do you race against the guys who are in the Chase and racing for a championship?

That's an easy one to answer and I'm here to tell you -- it's no different.

I've been on that side of the fence before, when you're a Chase guy. If I'm a Chase guy it's my responsibility to know who to race and who not to race.

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I do know that I was more worried about it when I was a Chase guy. You know out here as a driver who to race and who not to race; who's going to race you fair and who's going to try to use you up.

As a Chase driver that's more my responsibility than the other guy's. If I'm racing for a championship, I have a lot more to lose, and I know that guy who's trying to salvage his season by winning a race has nothing to lose.

I know he wants to win the race no matter what, and when it comes right down to it, I have to race him accordingly.

And I'll tell you, when it comes down to racing, racing hard and making the effort to prepare, everyone in this garage area, whether they're racing to stay in the top 20 in the standings, or to stay in the top 35, raced just as hard week to week as the guys who were racing to make the Chase did.

Actually, I think it's harder to race running 25th than it is to be running the top 10 every week. I say that because my guys have to work twice as hard -- and all the guys on these race teams work hard, don't get me wrong -- but we're always cutting up stuff trying to make changes, to make improvements.

We're always cutting up a chassis, cutting off a body and we've got to test twice as much trying to find every little thing that we can trying to bump ourselves up to that next competitive level.

Now, teams that have already found it -- and that are in the Chase -- are saving their equipment and saving their guys' energy and getting ready for this 10-race stretch in the Chase. So it was definitely harder running like we ran this year.

We put forth a lot of effort and it was heartbreaking not to make a better run for the Chase than what we made. I think it's been frustrating for all of us at Gillett Evernham Motorsports. We didn't really know we were going to struggle this much this year.

My guys did a great job preparing the cars this past winter and we felt like we had a really good fleet. We just haven't run as good as we would have liked -- whether it's been with the Car of Tomorrow or the old car.

We're definitely putting in the time and effort and we're definitely making gains. Kasey [Kahne] has run very well the last few weeks and we've been qualifying good the last three weeks -- we just haven't translated it over to Sunday yet.

So, we still have a little bit of work to do, but we've got nine races left to make improvements and make our team better -- keeping one eye on the races we have left this season, trying to win one of them but also trying to learn everything we can to end this season on a good, positive note. That's rule No. 1, because this season isn't over for us, by any means.

And No. 2, we've got to keep one eye on getting ready for the 2008 season. Every time we run one of these Car of Tomorrow races, like we did last weekend at New Hampshire, like we'll do coming into Dover this weekend and three more times this season, we need to concentrate on learning as much as we can that we can apply in 2008.

So we've got a lot of work ahead of us. Even though we can't be crowned Nextel Cup champion, we still have a lot of things we can learn for next year.

It hasn't been hard for me to get out of bed every morning. I'm not like that yet -- nowhere near it. I want to be out here. I don't have to coax myself into showing up every morning.