As others struggled, Sadler made best of Indy chaos

While Sunday's Allstate 400 at the Brickyard looked like a disaster in the making to almost everyone else right from the start, Elliott Sadler saw an opportunity for his struggling No. 19 Dodge team.

So as many of the Goodyear tires handed out to all teams literally returned to dust, and NASCAR tried to manage the calamity by throwing one competition caution after another in rapid and annoying fashion at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Sadler employed a sound strategy that eventually paid off with his best finish of the 2008 Sprint Cup Series season.

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You know, we're not kissing the bricks. But a fourth-place finish for our team right now is a job well done.
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ELLIOTT SADLERSaving wear on his tires whenever possible by not pushing his car too hard until the very end, Sadler ended up finishing fourth -- trailing only eventual winner Jimmie Johnson, second-place finisher Carl Edwards and Denny Hamlin, who placed third.

Sadler knew tire wear was going to be an issue even before the green flag dropped. He said he was expecting a caution-filled race similar to the one at the Coca-Cola 600 in May of 2005, when tire problems led to a record 22 yellow flags.

"I told everybody before the race, 'Hey, look, at Charlotte we just ran a certain lap time no matter what.' That's what we did," Sadler said. "If somebody came up on us and wanted to pass us, we let 'em go. We raced the racetrack until there were about 30 or 40 laps to go. Then we started racing hard -- and it paid off for us."

In the end, Sadler was more than satisfied. He was all smiles.

"You know, we're not kissing the bricks. Congratulations to Jimmie Johnson and those guys for that," Sadler said. "But a fourth-place finish for our team right now is a job well done."

Sadler has had some good runs this season in his Gillett Evernham Motorsports Dodge. He finished sixth in the season-opening Daytona 500 in February, eighth at the Coca-Cola 600 in May, ninth at Michigan in June and fifth at New Hampshire just three races ago.

But he has endured more than his share of hard luck, finishing dead last 43rd at Atlanta, 42nd at both Darlington and Dover, 41st at Phoenix after qualifying second, 39th in July's return visit to Daytona and 34th at Pocono. There were other races, such as Infineon, when he was running up front until the very end when Schleprock struck -- relegating him to a 19th-place finish after he qualified sixth and appeared destined for at least a top-five finish before a tire went down during the final laps.