ArticleMayfield suffers through another gloomy day
BY SHAWN WINDSOR
FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITER
June 19, 2006
BROOKLYN, Mich. -- It ended in the rain. And all Jeremy Mayfield could do was spit expletives.
Not because he was soaked as he walked in a downpour from pit row back to his motor home, not even because he finished 36th in the 43-car field.
But because he didn't know why.
"We are missing something somewhere," he said. "I'm not sure what it is."
For the 15th time this season, Mayfield failed to find the top 10 -- after the two most consistent seasons of his career, when he made the chase for the cup, NASCAR's version of the playoffs.
He and his Dodge team had hoped that returning to Michigan International Speedway, where he won last August, might get his year going. All it did was leave him further behind.
He knew it on the first lap of the race, when he couldn't take the turns with any speed, and began a long, steady slip toward the back. His Evernham Motorsports teammate Kasey Kahne, meanwhile, won the race. And he did it with Mayfield's crew from last year.
Kahne struggled a year ago. Then team owner Ray Evernham switched the crews around, giving Mayfield a new, generally less-experienced group. Kahne won for the fourth time Sunday with Mayfield's former guys. The third car in the team, driven by Scott Riggs, also uses new guys. He finished 29th.
"It's a shame," Mayfield said. "We've got one car winning the race while the other two are terrible. I'm happy for the '9' car, though."
The theory was that the veteran Mayfield would blend with the new crew while his former veteran crew would mesh with young Kahne.
"My whole career has never been like this," Mayfield said. "The car ain't fast, it won't go nowhere, we can't fix it. But the strong will survive. We will get it right."
He and his crew began the day as though they would.
'No damn grip at all'On the first pit stop, the over-the-wall crew jumped out to greet Mayfield's car in a ballet of black and red, switching the tires, filling the tank and sending him off.
"Good job, guys," team director Chris Andrews crackled over the radio.
At that point, the race held promise.
Mayfield started in the 18th position. Despite the trouble on the turns, he was maintaining his spot. But that didn't last long.
During the second pit stop, the crew had to adjust the springs. It got worse from there.
"No damn grip at all," Mayfield said into the radio. "I can't get into the corners."
The pattern held for the rest of the race. He'd pull in the pits, the crew would adjust the springs -- or the tie rods or the tire pressure -- and it would only get worse.
Halfway through the race, he was near the back.
It was a nasty cycle. The car was slow because it couldn't corner, the crew had to make adjustments, which took more pit time, which caused them to lose spots, and then the car wouldn't react anyway.
"It's hard when you are making adjustments all day," said Ed Watkins, the jack guy who lifts up the car during stops for new tires.
As the laps passed, and cars passed team Mayfield, the crew grew silent, listening to the frustrating chatter coming from their driver, their spotter, their crew chief, their engineers. They sat on the used tires under a tent just behind the pit box and stared at nothing.
Mayfield was 20 seconds behind the leader, which is maybe 20 football fields.
"We kind of knew it was going to be a long day," said Ramon Zambrano, the crew member in charge of the car's interior who helps with tires on pit row. "We had a long day (Saturday)."
It was during practice that the team realized it couldn't find the fractions and, therefore, balance that would let Mayfield attack the track. It didn't help that the weather broke and a cool storm blew in, changing the conditions.
'He's better than this'The start of the race was delayed by an hour. The yellow caution flag came out several more times when the sky opened up and sent down a drizzle. Finally, 129 laps into the race, a hard rain fell, and the race was called.
Mayfield jumped into the pit box to chat with Andrews and the engineers for a minute. The rest of the crew huddled under the Dodge-red tent after scurrying to pull the gear with them. They didn't say much.
A few minutes later, Mayfield climbed from the pit box and into the downpour. His wife, Shana Mayfield, was waiting in the motor home, where she watched part of the race.
"I turned it off," she said. "I'm sick of it. Something has to give. He's better than this."
Her husband quickly walked out into the heavy rain. Water poured off the lip of his hat. His suit draped him like a wet burlap sack.
He wove through the car haulers, past the medical tent, into the gates of the drivers' compound, through the hulking motor homes. No one else was around.
"We were fighting the same thing we fought all weekend," he said.
And he disappeared into his bedroom.
Dry clothes awaited.