Catchfence

This is the most sordid story in modern NASCAR, and it shows no sign yet of going away even though the ante keeps getting raised. Former driver Jeremy Mayfield has been locked in a hideously ugly legal fight with NASCAR because NASCAR suspended him for testing positive in the sanctioning body’s drug testing efforts. Mayfield got a court injunction lifting the suspension but has not been able to race, and now he’s failed another test – and worse, there is now at least one witness that he is a chronic user. The way this is going there may be more witnesses.

Mayfield’s defense reeked of absurdity when he acknowledged early on that he’d taken substances; his excuse was that they were medicines for allergies and for Attention Deficit Disorder. Yet drivers who take medicines tell NASCAR first what they are taking and get word that what they’re taking is legal before they use. Mayfield by everything I’ve been able to find did no such thing, and his vitriolic attack on the witness betrayed utter, embarrassing desperation on Mayfield’s part.

The whole mess has brought to light a sordid side to a driver who actually made something of himself in NASCAR circles. After several years in ARCA racing Mayfield found himself at the Winston Cup level in 1994, driving Cale Yarborough’s Ford after Derrike Cope was released. Cope and Mayfield crashed together at New Hampshire that season, an irony that has turned out to be something of a harbinger.

Mayfield began to show speed in Cale’s Ford and in 1996 with engine builder Tony Santanacola became a legitimate threat, especially on restrictor plate tracks, but that September he was released, and in a bizarre coincidence he swapped rides with John Andretti, taking over Carl Haas’ Ford. He again showed moxie, and when Carl Haas’ team was purchased by Roger Penske, Mayfield became a winner, at Pocono in June 1998. But his season collapsed after that – one notable incident came at Indianapolis when he raced to second, then hammered the wall after the right front tire blew; reportedly Mayfield angrilly went to his hauler without saying a word to anyone – and it wasn’t until May 2000 that he won again, winning at Fontana, then booting Dale Earnhardt aside to win at Pocono.

But amid this rumors periodically circulated that Mayfield wasn’t the best team player in racing; as his 2000 season dragged into an epidemic of engine failures while senior teammate Rusty Wallace won four times in 2000, the rumors intensified, riding alongside a general sense that Wallace, as Penske Racing’s senior driver, was completely favored at Mayfield’s expense on the organization’s resource and depth charts. It spilled into the open when Mayfield ripped the organization after falling out at Kansas in 2001, saying they brought the wrong car to the track. He was fired after that.

He joined Ray Evernham’s Dodge team for 2003 and lasted until latter 2006, winning at Richmond in 2004 and Michigan on fuel mileage in 2005. But the rumors of poor inter-team chemistry with Mayfield resumed, and got worse when Evernham invested heavily – both in terms of racing and emotionally – in Erin Crocker, a situation called out by Mayfield publically. In the end he was gone, and an attempt to hook up with Bill Davis in 2007 ultimately went nowhere.

The impression Mayfield always gave thus was that of a cancer in the garage of every team he raced for, and his antics now have only made that suspicion seem obvious. It is notable that Mayfield is getting no support from other drivers – in contrast, the always-intemperate Paul Tracy was suspended by CART for recklessness early in this decade and got considerable public support from other drivers. About the only support he’s been getting is on the varied message boards of racing websites, and that isn’t much.

Mayfield’s act became tiresome long ago as he displayed the classic arrogance and insincerity of athletes caught using illegal substances yet maintaining a fiction of denial. Indeed a striking similarly comes with baseball pitcher Roger Clemens, confronted with a bevy of evidence of steroid usage and responding with attacks that make no sense yet continued with a vengeance that bordered on insanity.

It seems Mayfield is fighting a battle he cannot win with a vengeance that betrays a sordid, untrustworthy side of him that totally negates respect for whatever he accomplished on the racetrack. He should have admitted to being a user and accepted punishment; maybe then he could have begun to salvage a career that, because he chose to fight, now looks ruined.