New Mayfield rising: after parting with Penske Racing, Jeremy Mayfield trusts Ray Evernham to get his career back on track - Interview

Auto Racing Digest, May, 2002 by Larry Woody

JEREMY MAYFIELD THOUGHT he had landed a dream ride, but it gradually turned into a nightmare. And so, after more than four years as a teammate of Rusty Wallace at Penske Racing, Mayfield walked away from the opportunity he had always coveted.

Mayfield didn't just quit--he quit with eight races to go in the season, leaving after a horrid three-race stretch in which he finished no better than 29th. Mayfield had been increasingly outspoken in his criticism of the team's performance, suggesting that mistakes and misjudgments were made that hampered his ability to compete on the track.

For example, Mayfield was not pleased that his team brought a short-track car for him to race at the the 1.5-mile Kansas Speedway. By the time the race ended, the only thing sputtering worse than the car was Mayfield himself. "It's really discouraging when you put everything you have into driving, but have a car that's not competitive," he said.

Although frustrated, Mayfield was far from finished. Before the season ended he was swept up by Ray Evernham and signed to drive for Evernham Motorsports in 2002.

Still, the Mayfield mystery remains. What went wrong? Why couldn't a talented driver mesh with a team as powerful as Penske's?

Mayfield admits he doesn't have a concrete reason for the breakup. "It just wasn't working," he says. "There isn't one single thing you could put your finger on. Things just gradually went downhill and finally stalled completely. The end had been coming for a while, and because nothing seemed to be working, I decided to go ahead and get out. I figured it was best for me and the team. I wanted to go ahead and make a move and not wait until the end of the year when all the good rides were gone."

After signing with Evernham, Mayfield indicated he would have been willing to serve out the remainder of the season with Penske Racing, "but anyone who knows Roger Penske [knows that] if you don't want to be there, he doesn't want you there, either."

The bridge wasn't burned--it was torched. "It's weird, the way things worked out," says Mayfield. "But it's better for me in the long run."

Evernham jumped at the chance to add Mayfield to his stable of Dodge drivers. Mayfield's experience should help the high-dollar operation take a big step forward in its second season. "I feel as if Jeremy can help build the technical side of our team," says Evernham, who will put Mayfield in the No. 19 car driven last year by rookie Casey Atwood. Atwood will be transferred to a No. 7 car co-owned by Ultra Motorsports. Evernham's third driver, Bill Elliott, will stay put in the No. 9.

Elliott earned Evernham his first victory as a team owner late last season, but not before the former crew chief had expressed concern about the slow progress of his new venture, specifically Atwood. "There's a hole in Evernham Motorsports," he said. "We're not as good as we need to be. At certain tracks, it's difficult to try to teach Casey and bring him along. We don't even know if our motors and cars are right. You can't afford to lose battles if you're going to win the war."

Evernham seems to be drawing inspiration from "The Art of War," written some 2,000 years ago by military strategist Suntzu. "You put your best generals in the best places while you're building your army," he says. "I've got two experienced generals [Elliott and Mayfield] to help build the team, and I know I've got a future Winston Cup champion [Atwood] in training, so I don't want a lot of pressure on him right now."

Until last season's setback, Mayfield had been on a fast track to NASCAR stardom, too. The 32-year-old driver had six poles, three victories, and more than $11 million in earnings in fewer than eight full seasons in Winston Cup.

"Things were going really well," says the Owensboro, Ky., native who followed the career path of his boyhood hero, Darrell Waltrip. Mayfield, like Waltrip, moved from Owensboro to Nashville to further his career, running Saturday night fender-benders at Nashville Speedway while driving ARCA races for locally based Sadler Racing.

From there, Mayfield broke into Winston Cup and, despite limited backing, quickly proved his ability as a driver. Suddenly he was a hot property, and Penske came calling with an offer to team Mayfield with veteran superstar Rusty Wallace. "I thought I'd gone to heaven," says Mayfield. "I thought I'd really made it."

But heaven gradually unraveled. In reflection, Mayfield is hesitant to cast blame for his dampened dreams. "I don't have any hard feelings toward anybody," he says. "I know that the guys on the team were just as disappointed and frustrated as I was with our results. I wish everybody back there the best of luck.

"I guess racing is a lot like life. Things don't always turn out like you'd planned or hoped. But you don't give up. You keep going and hope that things will improve. That's the way I'm looking at my new deal. Sure, it was frustrating when things were going poorly, but someday I may look back and say, `Man, that was the best thing that every happened to me. It got Ray Evernham and I together.' The past is the past, and I'm not going to look back."