JOLIET, Ill. — Elliott Sadler spent most of the week in bed with a stomach virus, and wasn’t able to eat anything beyond a single biscuit Sunday morning.
As weak as Sadler felt, there was no way he was giving up his seat.
Sadler brushed off questions from team owner Richard Childress about a potential replacement driver, then held off a charge by Ricky Stenhouse Jr. on a green white-checker finish to win the NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Chicagoland Speedway on Sunday.
“I told Richard yesterday, I was like, ‘I can handle this,’ ” Sadler said.
Childress said he thought about putting a backup driver in place just in case, but he understood why Sadler didn’t want to give up the wheel.
“I’ve seen drivers when it gets down to it, that’s worse than giving your wife away, I think,” Childress said, before sheepishly apologizing to Sadler’s wife, who was sitting off to the side in the post race interview room.
It was important to Sadler to tough it out.
“It was a big-time pride thing today to stay in the car and do what I felt like I needed to do to be competitive,” Sadler said.
Stenhouse finished second, followed by Justin Allgaier, Kenny Wallace and Michael Annett.
Wallace’s car was found to be too light in post race inspection. NASCAR officials will determine any penalties early this week.
Stenhouse appeared to have the stronger car and was chasing down Sadler in the closing laps of the race, but a late caution bunched up the field for NASCAR’s version of overtime. Sadler got a push from Allgaier on the restart and pulled away.
Had the race gone green until the end, Stenhouse was certain he would have ended up in victory lane.
“We had it won,” he said.
It was the third victory this season for Sadler, who has eight Nationwide victories in his career. Sadler won at Phoenix and Bristol earlier this season.
He leads the series standings by 11 points over Austin Dillon, who finished sixth.
Many of the leaders had just made their final pit stop of the day when Brad Sweet spun to bring out a caution. It was a boost to several drivers, including Sadler, Allgaier and Kyle Busch, who were able to pit under caution.
The ill-timed caution flag hurt several drivers who already had pitted, especially Sam Hornish Jr., who expressed his annoyance to his crew on the radio.
Sadler led when the race restarted with 28 laps to go. Stenhouse then made a charge, taking third place away from Busch with 20 laps to go and taking second from Allgaier with 16 to go. Sadler had a lead of just under two seconds, with Stenhouse closing in quickly. Then Hornish tapped the rear bumper of Busch and sent him crashing into Brendan Gaughan with eight laps left, bringing out a caution and bunching up the field.
Stenhouse was hoping officials would stop the race with a red flag to clean up the track and run a few more laps to the finish, but it didn’t happen.
Sadler and Stenhouse lined up for the green-white checker restart, and Allgaier gave Sadler a push when the green flag fell. Sadler surged away and Allgaier couldn’t stay in contact.
“I knew if I could time it just right and push him out,maybe we could race for the win,” Allgaier said. “We did that, and just lost a little bit of momentum in [Turns] 1 and 2, and that’s what allowed Ricky to really get a run on the outside. But all in all, just a great day for us.”
Stenhouse charged to second but couldn’t chase down Sadler at the end.
“I feel like the 31 [Allgaier] just pushed the 2 [Sadler] so far out there, there wasn’t anything I could do,” Stenhouse said.
INDYCAR
Castroneves wins
EDMONTON, Alberta - Helio Castroneves has tightened up the IndyCar Series points race by winning at Edmonton.
Castroneves had to hold off Takuma Sato over the final 15 laps of Sunday’s race to pick up his second victory this season.
It pushed Castroneves up to second in the standings, and he trails leader Ryan Hunter-Reay by 23 points with four races remaining. Sato was second, Will Power was third and Graham Rahal and Alex Tagliani rounded out the top five.
Hunter-Reay finished seventh.
Sports, Pages 15 on 07/23/2012