1on1: Elliott Sadler

Elliott Sadler is a Virginian, a good ol' boy and proud of it. He's also finishing up a new house, making wedding plans, getting ready for a huge charitable undertaking or two and, oh yeah, trying to win races in the toughest racing series this country has ever seen.

The driver of the No. 19 Dodge for Gillett Evernham Motorsports also is a gentleman who takes his fame and fortune and puts it to good use whenever possible. He enjoys a good day of hunting, any time he can spend in Nag's Head, a good round of golf and a good time wherever it may be found.

This weekend at Michigan International Speedway, Sadler will strap into the Stanley-sponsored Charger and set off in search of a $1 million payday from Stanley that will lift the spirits of kids everywhere who are part of the Children's Miracle Network.

Sadler went 1on1 with NASCAR.COM at Watkins Glen, talking charity, the famous Sadler Barn, golf, fishing, hunting and whatever else came to mind. Oh, and racing, too!

Q: Talk about timing, talk about pressure. You're racing for $1 million this week at Michigan.

Sadler: That's awesome. When we ran the promotion and did the commercials with Stanley a couple months ago, they were like, 'Well, we want you to run good everywhere, but we'd really like you to win Michigan.' To win a race and have $1 million on the line, that's fun. We're taking our best car, our Indy car, that we ran so well with and had a chance to win the Brickyard 400 with [finished season-best fourth]. We're taking a loaded gun. We ran very well [at Michigan] the first race and should have finished in the top five, but gas-mileage stuff got us a little bit [finished ninth], but we're pretty optimistic about going back there.

I know Rodney [Childers, team director] has put a lot of extra effort into that race to make sure that when we go there we have a great chance of running up front. We think that's one of our better tracks, so we're going to go there and do the best we can.

Q: It's for a great cause, and I understand you have a little side trip associated with this.

Sadler: We are very fortunate to use our names and NASCAR to reach a lot of different people and a lot of different charities. When you have sponsors like Stanley that are putting this much into it for charity, for such a great cause, I just think that's the icing on the cake. Best Buy did some stuff for us at Dover, making it the Autism Speaks 400 presented by Best Buy, and now Stanley coming up and putting up all this money and putting all this effort to give back to charity.

It's pretty cool ... to have sponsors that believe in stuff that you believe in, and I'm pretty fortunate to have two awesome companies behind me that buy into what we buy into each and every week. I've met some great people who are autistic and some great families like that. It's cool, man. It's cool. (Continued)