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.

Q: You're having the 2008 Barn Party on Sept. 3 at the famous Sadler Barn in your hometown of Emporia, Va. It's for charity, which is cool, but the famous Sadler Barn? Briefly, what makes it famous?

Sadler: We started 25 years ago, having a Christmas party for our hunting buddies and people like that. It started as 60 or 70 people, and it has grown in 25 years as we have added on additions and bedrooms and kitchens and dance floors and stages ... it doesn't really look like a barn anymore on the inside. We have traditional Christmas parties and stuff for our customers where we have thousands of people there at a time. A lot of functions are held in our small town at the Sadler Barn.

• 2008 Barn Party for charity
• Official Foundation Web site

Q: Who manages it? It's a destination entertainment facility.

Sadler: We manage it through our oil company, one of my dad's businesses, and they make sure it's ready to go. They keep the schedule book on it, and it stays pretty full. Non-profit organizations use it for dances, we have a lot of wedding receptions there, a lot of fund-raisers, a lot of auctions, the local YMCA uses it all the time. It's rented out or used once or twice a month, easy.

Q: What are we talking, square-footage-wise?

Sadler: It started out at 800 or 1,000 square feet, and now it's 10 or 12 or 14,000 square feet. We definitely have added onto it. It's a cool deal. We understand how to have a crowd there, we understand how it works, we have the place for it. Then we came up with the barn party. We came up with the idea, 'let's give the fans something that no other driver will do. No other driver invites fans over to his house to do stuff, and we want to give our fans something special that they can remember their favorite drivers by.'

We had one a couple years ago and it was a huge success. That's all the fans have talked about since then, so we decided to have another one.

Q: How do you feel about fan events in general?

Sadler: Events are fun for me, because at the racetrack you don't have time to meet the fans like you should. When we're at the racetrack, we're focused on what we're doing as drivers. You don't always have the time to stop and sign autographs, you don't always have time to stop and talk to the fans at the racetrack, because you're meeting with the crew chiefs or driving the car and you're trying to stay focused on the job at hand.

I love doing events. I'm an extrovert, anyway, so I love doing events where you can spend the time with the fans and mingle and talk, sign autographs and things like that.

This one, yeah, I'm looking forward to it, because it's going to be fun, but it's a lot of pressure on us, too, because we want everything to go right, we want everything to be perfect when the fans get there. It's a lot of hard work put in by a lot of cool people so that when that Sept. 3 comes, we have every 't' crossed and every 'i' dotted, and hopefully everybody enjoys it.

Q: What are some of the special things that people can look forward to at the Barn Party?

Sadler: Not a lot of times do you have that many celebrities in the same area, so to have me and Dale Jarrett and Kasey Kahne there from the NASCAR world, signing autographs ... We have these cool prints and stuff out that the fans can come and be a part of and get signed. Then we have Lee Brice, who is just starting out in country music, we have local icon Don Cox opening the show for everybody. It's pretty much eight hours of country music being played that day.

We have American Idol's Bucky Covington and then of course Blake Shelton playing, for a very small amount ticket. You can't go to an auditorium somewhere and pay this kind of money and see this much music at one time. I think we're offering them something pretty special. Not only do you get to see your favorite NASCAR driver in a very relaxed setting, out in the backyard, pretty much at somebody's house ... then you get to see a pretty cool concert, seven or eight hours of music. How can you beat that?

Q: Have you put the word out, no wedding gifts?

Sadler: I don't think we have to worry about that too much. I don't want my fans to spend money on wedding gifts. I want them to come and have a good time and enjoy the event that we're putting on for them that day. What's cool about it is, we were able to get everybody to come do this, do all the traveling, bring all the instruments, bring the buses, everything, we were able to do all this for free because it's for charity. That is what's absolutely amazing about it, that all the money that the fans are spending this day isn't going in somebody's pocket. It's all going to charity, and that's what makes this day that much more special.

Fill 'er up

Four of Elliott Sadler's over-the-wall pit crew spent more than two hours recently working the gas pumps at a mini mart in Rochester, N.Y.

• Complete story, click here

Q: Speaking of weddings, I can appreciate you looking as good as you do, you went from home building to wedding planning. What has been the biggest eye-opener, and have you become good at delegating stuff?

Sadler: I'm very fortunate on the wedding planning, because she doesn't let me do anything. She is not a procrastinator by any means, and she had everything done within the first three weeks. She's handling all that, and I think she's very smart by not letting me be a part of it. My jobs were just to get my groomsmen ready, get my guest list ready ... which I've learned is very hard. We're having a very small wedding in a very small town, and there's 270, 280 seats in the local church. The guest list, sometimes, can be very big, so deciding who can come and who can't come has been the toughest thing I've had to do as far as the wedding is concerned. But we have some cool things going on for the reception, so hopefully everybody will enjoy that.

Q: You ought to do a simulcast to the Barn.

Sadler: We're already doing that. We're way ahead of you! You got to catch up! We're going to try to do that to keep everyone involved, and she's done a pretty amazing job getting everything ready. There's a lot of things to get ready for a wedding, she's got a pretty huge checklist. But I think she's having fun with it and I can't wait, and Jan. 17 [2009] is going to be a special day in both of our lives. Her grandparents are celebrating their 55th wedding anniversary on that same day, so that's pretty huge, we think.

Q: Any home nightmares? Do the good experiences outweigh the nightmares?

Sadler: You love having a home and I love building a home. I don't stay in Charlotte much anymore. Mr. Gillett and Ray Evernham, they let me stay at home a lot to be around my folks. I was in Charlotte a couple weeks ago, and I have one of those home security systems, and I hit the wrong code and set the alarm off at 12 o'clock at night. I had to get up at 5:30 in the morning to go test. So the alarm goes off at 12 o'clock at night and the lady calls. She says, 'You've been reported having a break-in ...' I said, 'Lady, I don't stay here enough, I have no idea what my code is to shut this thing off.' So I hit a bunch of numbers, hit a bunch of numbers and finally got the thing to shut off. Then the lady says, 'Now you've got to give me your code word.' I said, 'I have no idea what my code word is.' She says, 'Well, I'm going to have to send the cops.' I said, 'Yeah, go ahead, we'll talk about when they get here.'

To make a long story short, not staying in your new house a lot and having a nice alarm system, it can still go off a lot in the middle of the night if you don't know how to work it. I had a very loooong night that night.

Q: How'd the test go?

Sadler: The test didn't go very well, either. I wrecked my car! I went to Road Atlanta and wrecked my car for Watkins Glen. So not getting a good night's sleep definitely affected my performance at Road Atlanta.

Q: How many laps did you get in?

Sadler: I got in about 12, but it was a backup car. My guys are smart; they took a backup car to save my good one for The Glen.

Q: What's the state of Deer Camp 2008?

Sadler: Can't wait.

Q: I know you have good guys there.

Sadler: I have great guys around there. We have guys there that that's all they do, make sure the deer are fed, make sure the dogs are happy, all the grass is cut, all the soybeans are planted and the corn is planted and all the paths are cut back so when hunting season starts we can go at it. Everything is going great in southern Virginia right now, and everyone is getting eager, getting ready, and it's getting about that time. About the time September gets here -- I think once the Barn Party is over and we get that done and celebrate that great day -- then we're going to turn a lot of attention over to the hunting and do our final little wrap-up to get ready for the hunting season.

Q: You and Dale Jarrett are on [pro golfer] Mark Calcavecchia's dream foursome. What do you think about that?

Sadler: Isn't that cool? I think that's awesome. I like watching him on TV all the time. I'm playing pretty good golf now, so I wouldn't mind going to play with him now. I've gotten to meet him a couple of times, and he seems like a great guy. I think Dale Jarrett probably made a lot of people's dream foursome. If you ever play with him, it's just a great 18 holes of experience. Not only the way he plays golf -- you know that old wives' tale about you can tell what kind of gentleman a person is by the way they play golf? It's always a great experience playing 18 holes with him. It's cool to be part of somebody's dream foursome, because I get asked that question all the time because I'm a golfer. It's pretty cool to be part of somebody else's dream foursome. That's pretty neat.

Q: What's the best golf shot you've hit lately?

Sadler: That's a good question. I almost hit a hole-in-one at the Old Farm in Abingdon, Va., and one of the best golf courses in the United States. I was like 2-over-par, and I needed to just get a par on this little short downhill par-3 with water all the way to an island green. I almost hit a hole-in-one, got a birdie and kind of got my momentum going back again. It was a real pressure shot on a hole with water on all sides, because my ball doesn't do well in the water. They don't float very well. It was only like 170 yards downhill with a 7-iron.

Q: How was your Nag's Head experience, when you're looking at 17 consecutive weeks after that? Does that recharge your batteries?

Sadler: Yes. Nag's Head is awesome. That's where we got engaged, so naturally that's pretty special to Amanda and me. Nag's Head is awesome, because I've been going there since I was a kid. It's not far from home and that's where all my high-school friends hang out. We all go hang out at the beach. When I leave Watkins Glen, I'm going to Nag's Head and fishing in a huge fishing tournament, go out in the Gulf Stream for two days and fish until I have to go to Detroit. We're doing that this week and I'm fired up about that. My parents have had a house down there since before I was born, so it's a cool place to go.

Q: What's the target on that fishing trip?

Sadler: Catch the biggest billfish. That's the deal. It's a big tournament, and we want to catch the biggest billfish. If you do that, it's a pretty good day.

Q: The car's been going pretty good. How does that pump you up, and the rest of the race team?

Sadler: We've got some good racer's tracks coming up for us. I think our team, from Atlanta to now, has made the biggest improvement. If you look at the way we ran Texas and Atlanta, to now, we have probably taken the biggest steps as an organization and especially the 19 team as a race team. I'm very proud of my guys and it's definitely getting better. We're starting to understand what this car wants. When you have something so brand new, you don't know what it wants. You have to hit it from all sides. Last year, we were just hitting it from the wrong side. This winter we were hitting it from the wrong side. We have finally figured out what this car wants. We know how to plug into the systems, the computer systems we have and all the simulation programs that all teams have, and we know what this car wants before this car ever gets to the racetrack.

Now we have a lot of optimism. We understand that we're going to be good, we understand how to fix it. Now it's all about fine-tuning, getting the driver used to driving it a particular way at a track, get my communication down with my crew chief, Rodney Childers, and then move on from there. We are light-years ahead of where we were six months ago.

Q: Do you have to adjust your driving style to what these computers are telling you?

Sadler: Yeah. That's something I didn't do very well last year, was adjust what I was doing inside the car. I've gotten better at it, learned a lot from Kasey by watching his computers when we have them hooked up. I think that's helped our whole team.