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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
JENSEN: Mayfield’s Mayhem Tarnishes Sport
The Jeremy Mayfield case has been the biggest black eye NASCAR has faced in a long, long time. And they will not walk away from this fight...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted July 16, 2009   Charlotte NC
SPEED.com's Editor-in-Chief Tom Jensen. (Image: SPEED)
I remember it like it was yesterday, because I saw it with my own two eyes.

June 19, 2000. Pocono Raceway. The third and final turn on the 200th and final lap. Jeremy Mayfield’s Ford was running second to Dale Earnhardt’s infamous black No. 3 Chevrolet, when just past the entrance to the corner, Mayfield laid his front bumper on Earnhardt’s rear just enough to move him out of the way.

Mayfield won the race, Earnhardt slid up the track and finished fourth. In victory lane, Mayfield’s public relations flak, Chip Williams, whispered something in Mayfield’s ear before he got out of the car. “I didn't mean to wreck him,” Mayfield said after being prompted by Williams to recite a line Earnhardt had made famous. “I just meant to rattle his cage a little.”

Two years earlier, Mayfield had won at Pocono and actually taken the NASCAR Sprint Cup points lead briefly. I remember having a private conversation afterwards with team co-owner Michael Kranefuss, who believed that Mayfield had the ability to win a championship. Kranefuss beamed with pride when spoke of Mayfield’s prodigious talents and his faith in him behind the wheel.

But by Pocono in 2000, things already had started going terribly wrong for the team. In April, Mayfield’s car was found with tainted fuel at Talladega, a high-performance additive designed to increase horsepower. Although it was never proven, to this day many believe Mayfield was responsible.

That drove a stake into the relationship between team co-owners Kranefuss and Roger Penske, with The Captain buying Kranefuss out before the season ended. Mayfield tried to leverage his results into a ride with a better team and ended up being let go after 28 races in the 2001 season. And his former PR flack Williams, turned out to be a child molester and has been in prison since being busted in an Internet child-predator sting in January 2006.

After leaving Penske, Mayfield won two races in four-and-a-half years driving for Ray Evernham. But Evernham dumped him midway through the 2006 season after Mayfield publicly called his boss out. That was followed by a pair of disastrous stints with Bill Davis Racing and Haas-CNC Racing.

Prior to the Daytona 500, Mayfield formed his own team, Mayfield Motorsports, and during Media Day at the track told us reporter-types that he could turn a profit, even without signing a sponsor or even making races. I thought at the time it was the craziest thing I’d ever heard, or an outright lie, or both.


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