No. 38 team perplexed by slow start to season

By Ryan Smithson, NASCAR.COM
March 17, 2006 08:11 PM EST (01:11 GMT)

HAMPTON, Ga. -- Elliott Sadler knows that his No. 38 Ford has a lot of problems. He also knows that the problems will get a lot worse without major experimentation.

Sadler, who scored just one top-five last season, has started off 2006 with a disappointing pair of runs at Fontana and Las Vegas, so disappointing that Robert Yates Racing called a massive meeting this week to get their season turned around.

It won't be easy. Because NASCAR has severely restricted testing for this season, teams are much less likely to find a mid-season fix for their downforce woes. That leaves teams entirely reliant on the three practice sessions that accompany most Nextel Cup events.

As a result of Tuesday's meeting, Sadler and crew chief Tommy Baldwin are running an entirely different package for Atlanta, a package they know will either cause them to sink -- or swim.

"We can't test. We are going to Kentucky and we are not learning anything at Kentucky because it has got so much grip," Sadler said. "We are worried about fixing it. We are trying something totally new this weekend [at Atlanta]. We are playing offense. We are trying something new, off the wall."

Sadler finished a respectable 14th last weekend, but that finish was misleading: He gained eight spots because of the final green-white-checkered. He spent most of the race running in the middle the pack, and Sadler is tired of it.

Robert Yates Racing used to be dominant on the lower-banked intermediate tracks -- Sadler himself won the Fontana race in 2004 -- but the powerful Roush Racing camp has diminished their edge.

When NASCAR lopped a half-inch off the spoiler before the 2005 season, Robert Yates Racing was hard-hit by the change, while Roush and Hendrick Motorsports seemed to thrive.

"When you took the spoilers off the car, it makes it that much bigger a gap, a car missing it with the short spoiler is going to go backwards," Sadler said.

"Eight guys got it figured out, everybody else is struggling. We understand that Roush has five chances every week and Hendrick has four.

"We only got two chances, should we take a chance or should we be safe? We're not going to catch them being safe. I am not going to sit back and run 15th or 20th all year long by not trying anything but by being scared."

Sadler is eighth in points largely because he finished fourth at Daytona, but he says his team is currently not a contender on the intermediate tracks.

"We are not running good enough right now to win a race, and we know that," Sadler said. "I don't think we are running good enough to get a top-five.

"Are we running good enough to run all the laps and get a top-15? Yes. And we need to get top-15s and we need to see every checkered flag until we can get this thing situated."

After struggling to drive the car at Fontana and Las Vegas, Sadler was adamant on avoiding being satisfied with merely hanging on the lead lap.

"If we don't run good this Atlanta, so what?" Sadler said. "We tried. We'll go to Bristol."