In the Field: Elliott SadlerEvernham calling the shots as McDougall settles in
By Elliott Sadler, Special to NASCAR.COM
July 11, 2007
11:03 AM EDT
I've got an appearance Wednesday night at the NASCAR SpeedPark in Myrtle Beach, S.C., that I'm really looking forward to.
I can't wait because I always have a fun time doing NASCAR SpeedPark appearances, because they let me play. Yeah, I've got to sign some autographs and be calm and cool and hang out with the fans for a little while.
Don't get me wrong, hanging out with the fans is always great.
But after that they're just going to turn me loose and I get to race go-karts against the fans and beat and bang a little bit -- and have some fun -- which those appearances always are.
And this one, for me, is going to be extra special because my brother, Hermie, is going to be there; and we're going to have a match race.
We've gone and made another family outing out of the whole thing, as Hermie and his wife and daughters; his wife's family and friends; and our cousins are all going to be there so it should be a fun Wednesday night in Myrtle Beach.
You know, Hermie is a little older than me, so when he was racing Late Model stock cars in Myrtle Beach, I was not quite there yet. But we did race Busch cars at Myrtle Beach Speedway one time.
But this is our first time in go-karts on this particular speedway, so we're set up for a match race -- one-on-one and we'll see how that works out.
It should be fun, but I've just got to get there before he does and make sure I get to work and tune on my kart a little bit.
And when you talk about working and tuning and family, we had an interesting development in the last week or so at Evernham Motorsports.
We promoted one of the guys within our organization, Scott McDougall, to step up as the team director of my No. 19 Dodge Dealers/UAW Charger.
I think it's going to work out great, and I think that most of all, for our owner, Ray Evernham, to promote from within is great for morale in our company, because it gives people opportunities to move up to take on positions with greater responsibility.
We just decided last week that Josh Browne, even though I enjoyed working with him, would be better suited for the company as a whole if he stepped back from being team director of my car into an engineering role where he's helping all three teams -- not only ours, but also Kasey [Kahne] and Scott's [Riggs].
We felt we'd lost a little with all three teams as far as front-end geometry and reading tire data -- with Goodyear changing the tires so much. We think putting Josh back in that role where he's helping everyone will make us more prepared when we come back to the racetrack.
That's where Josh excelled, and that's why he got the chance to be the team director for the 19 team. So now our team is sacrificing a little bit for the benefit of the whole company, but we're gaining as a company to get him back involved with the different simulation programs that will help us all.
We needed to do something as a company because none of the three teams are running like they should.
We were very successful last year and the year before last when Josh was really the head guy as far as running the computer programs for the tire data and stuff like that.
As Goodyear changes the tires each and every year, it seems we've got to have somebody in the company that's really just focused on that 100 percent and that's going to be his role.
I like Scott a lot so far. We talked a lot last week and over the weekend at Daytona, and despite breaking the transmission as the race started, we had a lot of fun.
Moving ahead, I'm looking forward to working with him -- and we've still got everyone else on the team in place.
It's going to be tough to make this change in mid-season. I feel like I can do it, because this is my ninth season in the sport and I've worked with different crew chiefs.
Scott and I have had good talks about what I like to say as a driver and what I like to feel as a driver. He told me what he likes to hear as a team director so we'll go from there.
It might be some tough times at first until we get each other felt out, like determining how loose is too loose and how tight is too tight?
To help that, the neatest thing we did at the Pepsi 400 -- for the third time this season -- was that Ray was up on the box calling race strategy for me.
We did that because we didn't want to just throw Scott into the lion's den, right off the bat. We wanted to ensure the communication is good until Scott and I are clicking and get a good feel for each other.
It wasn't like we were putting the whole load on Scott in the first race. Ray wanted to help him with race strategy so Scott and I could really concentrate on our communication.
And I think Ray really enjoyed calling the race. We had an awesome racecar, and then we had transmission trouble before the race even started. I was looking forward to working with Ray at a track that he'd already won at five times, but we'll have a few more opportunities in the coming weeks before me and Scott take over the deal.
But I think Ray really enjoyed calling practice and the race, and I know I really enjoyed working with him.
We had fun, but I continued to find out that Ray's an amazingly smart man. He does not leave any stone unturned and he's always thinking outside the box -- always thinking of new ways to make our cars better.
I now understand, after having the chance to work with him since last summer -- and really up close in the three races we've done, like the Daytona 500 where I scored my best finish of the year -- why he was so successful when he was at Hendrick Motorsports.