Las Vegas was a GEM of a race for Kahne, Sadler
By SceneDaily Staff
Monday, March 03, 2008
LAS VEGAS – Gillett Evernham Motorsports seems on track for a complete turnaround this season. In Sunday’s UAW-Dodge 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Kasey Kahne finished sixth and Elliott Sadler was 12th. That leaves both drivers in the top 10 in the standings.
Certainly it’s early in the season, but the Dodge team is showing the strength of 2006 on the intermediate tracks. Rookie Patrick Carpentier, the third member of the team, qualified for his first race of the season and finished 40th after being caught up in a crash.
Kahne, who had battled a sinus infection all weekend, said that he felt pretty well Sunday. It showed on the track when he lost a lap but then was able to rally back into his final position. That gave Kahne three consecutive top-10 finishes.
“My eyes hurt, but they’ve hurt all weekend,” he said. “It’s a good start for us. The guys did a really good job. The car was a little tight. It may have been my own fault on one of the adjustments. I thought it would help.
“It did at times, but throughout the last half of the race it didn’t. I think we could have been a little better if I hadn’t made the suggestion.”
Sadler, meanwhile, made a comeback of his own. His 12th-place finish was his best since Texas last fall, but came after he recovered from a penalty for speeding on pit road.
“To get caught speeding by a half-a-mile an hour and putting my team in that kind of bind is tough,” he said. “We kept going at it, going at it and had great pit stops all day – unbelievable pit stops. The pit stops kept us in the game.”
He said that team director Rodney Childers, who joined Sadler full time this season, made a “great call” to save the best set of tires until the end of the race. It not only boost the team in points, it also showed it what it could do in a crunch.
“[It was a] good finish for what we had going on today, so if we keep persevering and staying out of trouble we’re going to be there at the end,” Sadler said.
