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Huge UNC Supporter Elliott Sadler Given Pink Slip by NASCAR Team
Well, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to Elliott Sadler.
Reports at NASCAR.com, jayski.com and elsewhere indicate that Sadler was given an unwelcome present just days before the new year and weeks before his pending wedding. George Gillet, now clearly calling the shots at Gillet Evernham Motorsports (GEM), has apparently fired the veteran driver and replaced him with young and unproven A.J. Allmendinger.
Why should this matter to Tar Heels? Elliott’s brother, Hermie Sadler, is a UNC graduate and the Sadler brothers have been long-time and outspoken supporters. Elliott has season tickets to UNC basketball and can often be found in the crowd (and occasionally on radio shows) during pre-Daytona games. He even squeezes in some basketball during the lengthy NASCAR season.
Gillet has made a series of questionable moves since basically forcing out Ray Evernham, who has also cleared out all of his personal belongings from the GEM shop. Open-wheel racer Patrick Carpentier was fired in the middle of the season and replaced with Allmendinger, who apparently made enough of an impression in less than ten starts to oust three-time race winner Sadler.
Evernham, who has publicly spoken out about his helplessness to prevent any of Gillet’s moves that he disagrees with, is expected to sell the rest of his small remaining stake in GEM to focus on a dirt track he recently built in rural North Carolina.
Allmendinger will team with Kasey Kahne, with whom he has established an especially close relationship, and Reed Sorenson. A GEM merger with Petty Enterprises is rumored to be imminent and there is no word on who will drive the #43 car now that Bobby Labonte has been released from Petty.
Sadler is rumored to be in the running for the Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing #41 ride and perhaps the #77 ride at Penske Racing if Sam Hornish, Jr. returns to the Indy Racing League to replace Helio Castroneves, who may be headed to jail for tax fraud.
In a future blog post, I intend to detail the type of man that Gillet fired in Elliott Sadler. When I returned from Iraq in 2006, Sadler had a very special gift for me, one that I will never forget.
A member of the Tar Heel family has been done wrong. Elliott deserved far better than this.
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I have been telling my friends since about halfway through the 2008 season that I didn’t like what I was seeing at Gillett Evernham so I guess I can’t be too surprised by this.
First, it was obvious that Ray Evernham was being pushed out. Ray’s comment after the firing of Patrick Carpentier was that he had absolutely no say in that decision which made it quite clear that he was no longer part of the decision-making process.
Secondly, speaking of Patrick Carpentier, am I the only one seeing a pattern at GEM – a pattern where a driver is booted in favor of the next great driver??? Patrick Carpentier was brought in with a lot of flourish and Scott Riggs booted. Sure Scott’s contract was due to expire but they didn’t even let him finish the season. In less than a year Patrick is the one being booted in favor of AJ Allmendinger. Now Elliott gets booted for AJ. It makes me wonder who the next one will be to get the boot – AJ?? Reed?? My money is on Reed to not finish out the 2009 season. From what I have been able to determine, they still don’t have full sponsorship for his car and that could definitely be used as an excuse.
When George Gillett came into the picture we were told he was the “sponsor person”, the guy who could bring in bigtime sponsors. Okay, he brought in Budweiser for Kasey or did he? Was it George or was it Ray who brought them in -we really don’t know. Then Best Buy came on as a sponsor for the 19 car and Stanley Tools moved from the 10 car to the 19 car. Again, we really don’t know who negotiated that. Of course, when Stanley Tools moved to the 19 car that meant they weren’t sponsoring the 10 car anymore and Valvoline dropped much of their sponsorship of the 10 car and they ended up doing almost race-by-race sponsorship for that car. Then Unilever announced that it was dropping fulltime sponsorship of the Nationwide to do a partial sponsorship for JR Motorsports. It could be interpreted that they wanted to scale back on their sponsorship, but considering the developing pattern my guess would be that they weren’t happy with GEM.
It’s a shame that George Gillett doesn’t understand what he is throwing away by forcing Ray out. He may be a good businessman , although I’m not even convinced of that since I’ve been hearing rumors that he’s in financial trouble and trying to sell some of his teams. He certainly doesn’t have the NASCAR knowledge and experience of Ray Evernham. A smart businessman knows his area of expertise and allows others to be in charge in their areas of expertise. It seems like George Gillett wants full control and wasn’t willing to take advantage of Ray’s knowledge and years of experience. I won’t blame Ray if he sells the rest of his interest in GEM and wish him the best with his new endeavor. Hopefully when he sells the rest they will change the name so he will no longer have to be associated with the company.
For those people who say that Elliott has been the most overrated driver the last several years, I disagree. First of all, I don’t recall seeing where anyone has rated him with the likes of Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, etc. I will admit that Elliott didn’t set the world on fire at GEM but he wasn’t exactly terrible either. I guess people forget that when he took over the 19 car it wasn’t even in the top-35 in owner points. He managed to get it into the top-35 and keep it there. Sure we all wanted him to do better, but Dodges in general have struggled as evidenced by the fact that not one Dodge made the Chase in 2008. Even Kasey Kahne, who won six races in 2006, struggled – it’s not like he forgot how to race all of a sudden.
I’m sure there are other factors in this decision but the leading factor seems to be that AJ had a better average finish in those last five races than Elliott. Last time I looked the season wasn’t five races long so it will be interesting to see what AJ does over the course of an entire season. Or does he even get an entire season??? Considering what has happened to the past couple “new” drivers I wouldn’t be surprised to see him or Reed gone before the end of 2009.
Although it doesn’t seem like it right now, this may be a blessing in disguise for Elliott. I see Gillett Evernham as a sinking ship and it might work out better for Elliott in the end. It’s said that things happen for a reason and I have found that to be true, even though it didn’t seem like it at the time. I’ll be cheering for Elliott to land on his feet and wish him success wherever he goes.