Clear!Blue Communications For Dodge Motorsports, Press Release

ELLIOTT SADLER (No 19 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Avenger)

COMMENT ON COT

“It’s just a lot harder to drive. It’s going to be harder to race side by side with the COT. It’s a lot more aero dependent than the car of yesterday. We found that out at Bristol and we were surprised that the aerodynamics played a big part in it. We’ll keep working on it. I know we’ll keep learning something new about the COT every time we race it. What we learned from Bristol is that it’s a lot more aero dependent than we thought it was going to be.”

HAS THE COT BEEN YOUR BIGGEST CHALLENGE?

“I think it’s the most challenging thing I’ve been involved with in nine years because you’re driving two different race cars. It’s hard enough to go to the race track every week and adapt to the race track and try to be fast and compete against some of the other great race car drivers. Now trying to do it with two different race cars that you’ve got to have two completely different setups in, when we leave here at Martinsville we’ve got to pretty much forget about what happened all weekend and focus on Texas because it’ll be a different animal when we get down there with all the cars. It’s not only hard for the driver. It’s hard for the engineers and crew chiefs and everybody involved. It’s been a very tough season so far for everybody.”

IS MARTINSVILLE A RHYTHM TRACK?

“This is a momentum track, a rhythm track, a lot like Bristol. A lot of the short tracks are. You find a spot on the side of the wall, whether it be in turn one or turn three, and you make sure you focus on that same spot every time so you use the same amount of brakes every time. Hopefully you can get back on the gas at the same spot every time. You get a good rhythm going and get focused and get zoned in. Some drivers are better than others here at Martinsville doing that, but if you can find those points and get your car working around them you’re going to have a pretty good day. A lot of racetracks now have writing on the walls and they have all kind of Nextel stuff. I know at Bristol it’s the black Nextel painting going into turn one and turn three. At Martinsville it’s the red stripes on the wall. I’ll sometimes try to lift around them. The car of tomorrow is probably going to use somewhat different spots because it’s a lot harder to slow these cars down than it is our regular car. Hopefully I can find some and do my job as a driver and get in the groove. It’ll probably take two or three laps to find out where I need to be at. If you’re in the top five you’re usually in an open racetrack here. You can usually run some good lap times during the race and save your brakes. You’re going to use your stuff up in traffic a little more, but you can work around it.”

COMMENT ON EXHAUST PIPES

“I think NASCAR implemented a way we should run our exhaust pipes on our COTs. I know we were having problems with them, but we did a lot of testing with them. They were cracking a lot. We actually at Bristol ran heavy weights. We wanted to make sure the performance of the engine would not crack. None of the three Evernham drivers had any extra problems because we went the extra step to make them a lot heavier to make sure they wouldn’t crack, but that came from a lot of testing and observation over the winter. We did a lot of testing to make sure we got this COT as good as we could before we got to the racetrack.”

WHAT ARE YOU EXPECTING AT MARTINSVILLE?

“Until we race around each other a bunch and see what these splitters do and see how these cars react, we’re going to be scared of a lot of things I think. We’re not really going to know how the car is going to react to the wing tab knocked off or the splitter tab is knocked off until we have to experience it. We’re worried about it. I think all drivers are kinda curious of it. I think it happened a few times at Bristol last week. Martinsville is a lot tighter racing. I’m sure we’ll find out this weekend whether the splitter can do that or not. I’ll be ready to go back to the other car at Texas. I don’t want to run these on a big track yet until we get all the aerodynamics figured out and figure out what it wants. It’s a little bit better trying to get a car working at Bristol and Martinsville than it is a brand new car working at Texas or Atlanta or a place that’s very, very fast where you’re running over 200 mph. Let’s work out the kinks on these shorter tracks and figure out what we want as a race team before we go to a big track like that.”

ADDITIONAL COMMENT ON AERO PUSH IN COT

“These cars are so much wider in the back and so much taller. They’re creating a bigger hole in the air than we’re used to. It’s definitely caused some aero push, but it’s like that for everybody. As a driver you’ve got to work around it and make the most of it. We’ve never had that at Bristol, so we’ll see what it does here. I think the big telltale will be Phoenix. It’s faster there and flat and we’ll see what the aero push is like there. It might be good. We’ll see. “

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