The final off-weekend of the 2008 Sprint Cup season saw many Gillett Evernham Motorsports employees put in a little extra time at the team’s race shop Friday night. But it wasn’t to work on race cars. The employees played host to soldiers from a local North Carolina National Guard unit that plans to deploy overseas in 2009. More than 100 uniformed troops and their families enjoyed food, pit stop demonstrations, entertainment and employee tours of the race shops that are home to Kasey Kahne’s Budweiser Dodge, Elliott Sadler’s Best Buy/Stanley Tools/McDonald’s Dodge and Patrick Carpentier’s Valvoline/LifeLock Dodge. The guard unit detachment is from the Alpha Battery 1-113 Field Artillery Unit of the North Carolina Army National Guard. The battery is headquartered in Lincolnton, N.C. while the detachment calls Statesville home. Friday night’s event marks the first public effort of the Gillett Evernham Motorsports Soldier Outreach committee. The committee plans future fundraisers to aid the unit and its families while the troops are overseas. (Gillett Evernham Motorsports PR)(7-19-2008)
