NASCAR: Sadler's Weekend Goes From "Best Ever" To "Lucky To Be Alive"

On Saturday, Elliott Sadler climbed from his truck to greet his excited crew in Victory Lane.  Sadler had become only the 21st driver to win in all three of NASCAR’s major series.  The “lovable teddy bear” had congratulation text messages, tweets, and phone calls coming from thousands of people.

Sadler tweeted all of his followers after his win in the Kevin Harvick Inc truck. “Amazing day today!! Thanks to all the fan's texts and tweets I have got. By far the biggest win in my career other than bristol 2001…Very emotional win for me! I needed this to show everyone I still want to win bad as ever. Can't thank Kevin and Delana enough for this!!!... Got to say it was awesome having my wife and son in victory lane today, plus having hermie there also!! Big day for our family!”

But only 24 hours after one of the biggest wins of his career, Sadler found himself lucky to be alive after hitting the inside wall at Pocono during the Cup race.

It all started when Johnson tried to bump draft Kurt Busch.  The bump looked innocent enough and there have been thousands of them in NASCAR.  But Busch lost control of the car and caused the only major wreck of the race.

At first, it looked like Busch had been the only one affected by the wreck until the TV cameras showed an engine and other various parts in the grass while the car the parts belonged to sat on the track. The totaled No. 19 had fans gasping but a collective sigh was released when the window net was dropped.  That was until Sadler stumbled out of the car with pain clearly etched on his face before laying down on the track.

Sadler was rushed to the infield care center and released shortly after.  The media immediately caught up with him outside the doors to grab a statement.  While still looking dazed and more than just a little sore, Sadler assured everyone he was okay.

“I’m fine. I’m okay.  I’m a little sore, I think, from where the belts grabbed me.  It knocked the breath out of me pretty good, but it’s definitely the hardest hit I’ve ever had in a race car.  These new cars are built to be safer and if I can get out of that and walk through that, I think it did its job.  I’m not sure what happened.  I know some guys got spun out or moved around up in front of us, and I saw some smoke.  Everybody started checking up and I checked up, but whoever was behind did not and ran in the back of us and knocked me down through the grass.  It’s not the day we wanted to have with the U.S. Air Force Ford.  It’s just a tough day.” 

Sadler hasn’t had the best racing career results-wise but he was full of confidence going into Sunday’s race that he could pull off a top run.  Unfortunately, once again the NASCAR gods reminded us that anything can happen when you put 43 competitive cars in an enclosed track.  In this case, Elliott Sadler and Kurt Busch paid the price for doing what they love.