Elliott Sadler is retiring from full-time NASCAR competition after this season

After more than two decades of regular NASCAR driving gigs, Elliott Sadler is going another direction at the end of the season.

Among the veteran drivers in NASCAR, few are probably as underappreciated as Elliott Sadler. The affable 43-year-old Virginian has carved out a distinct niche for himself as one of the few experienced NASCAR XFINITY Series contenders among an ever changing sea of young faces on their way to bigger and better things, at least in many cases.

It’s easy to forget that Sadler was a fixture at the Cup Series level for years, making over 400 starts and winning three times. But while his newer role as perennial XFINITY contender may have suited him, it’s one he’s ready to walk away from in just a few months.

Sadler himself made the announcement official, taking to Twitter and posting a statement on his own website that he was going to make the current season his final one, at least as a full-time driver.

Since he started concentrating on the XFINITY Series in 2011, Sadler has come agonizingly close to winning a championship but never quite managed to pull it off. He’s been the series runner-up an astounding four times, including in both 2016 and 2017, and never finished worth than sixth in the final standings.

He’s currently — you guessed it — second in points but will have the unenviable task of trying to defeat Christopher Bell for the title. Bell is one of those youngsters with a bright Cup Series future that Sadler has seen come and go through the second series so often this decade. We’re guessing that with Sadler making the admirable move of calling it quits to spend more time with his family, many NASCAR fans wouldn’t mind at all if just this one time, the old dog proved he could still learn a few tricks down the stretch.