NASCAR WCUP: Sadler looks forward to racing at Watkins Glen
Posted By Terry Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel
August 8, 2001NASCAR has its second and final event on a road course this weekend. Elliott Sadler and the Motorcraft Racing Team prepared for the race by going to Virginia International Raceway a week ago to test. Eddie Wood characterized the test as "awesome," and Sadler felt it was good preparation for this coming Sunday's Global Crossing at the Glen. Below are Elliott's thoughts about Watkins Glen and the test.
ELLIOTT SADLER, #21 MOTORCRAFT RACING FORD TAURUS: ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO GOING TO WATKINS GLEN? "To throw two road courses in a year I think is good for everybody. To get it out of our system, all the shifting and sliding around and all that mess and running off the track. A lot of places you can't run off the track because there are walls everywhere. They put them up for some reason. So it's cool to go to a place where you can run off the track a little bit. But I'm glad we only do it twice.
"I really like Watkins Glen a lot better than Sears Point. It's a lot faster. It's a lot more straight-aways in between the turns so you can get a little speed built up. It's a lot more fun. I think if we ran a road course 10 races a year, a lot of us circle track guys would have been out of a job a long time ago.
"It's hard to remember all those turns. We're used to four turns, not 13."
YOU TESTED AT VIRGINIA INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY LAST WEEK. WHAT DID YOU THINK OF IT? "Oh man, we had a great time up there. I had never been to that race track before. It's got like 16 or 17 turns. It's like a minute and 30-some seconds to get around it. It's a pretty cool race track. It's got a lot of blind spots in it, and that's pretty fun because the first few laps you don't really know where you are going. We had a lot of fun. I think we learned some stuff about the car that we needed to know, and it got me in the swing of things getting ready for Watkins Glen and hopefully it will show up and we'll have a good run up there."
Text provided by Marti Rompf
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