2005 Racing Issue - UAW-Chrysler.com

COMEBACK KID:
JEREMY MAYFIELD
JEREMY MAYFIELD’S FANS TRY NOT
to blink. With Mayfield behind the
wheel, things can change fast. Even
during the dips of the roller-coaster
2004 season, Mayfield kept his edge —
and his flair for the dramatic. Take the
September 11 race in Richmond, the
one that would decide who gets in the
Top 10 Chase. Mayfield and his team
were in 14th place, 55 points down. Put
a fork in the season? Um, not exactly.
Mayfield and his team gave
Richmond their grittiest, gutsiest
best and ended up in Victory Lane —
a win that leapfrogged them into the
Chase for the championship.
In the end, it was typical of his year
— facing adversity and overcoming
it with nothing but sheer determination.
“We had our
ups and downs
all season,” says
Mayfield. “But our
team always knew
how to turn a negative
into a positive.
That’s how I knew
we could handle this
kind of season.”
One key: Sticking
with — and believing
in — a winning
plan. Even if the
plan wasn’t winning
much at the time.
“A lot of other
teams don’t run that
way,” Mayfield says. “They run into
trouble and they want to change a
bunch of things — shift people over
here and there. We stuck together.
That’s how we ended up like we did.”
It helped that Mayfield kept the
same Dew Crew. “We got more comfortable,
knowing how we all thought
about running a car,” he says. “That
made a difference.”
Ultimately, it was in Richmond
where the No. 19 team made its
breakthrough. “Our position going
in was, ‘Fine, let everybody talk
about us being out of Top 10 contention,’”
Mayfield says. “Then, we
were going to just show what we
could do. But I have to admit, after
we won at Richmond, there wasn’t
any feeling in the world like it.”
notice. “It proved to everybody what
we already knew about Jeremy and
his team,” says No. 19 owner Ray
Evernham, president and CEO of
Evernham Motorsports. “It proved
they could go out there with all the
pressure in the world. And believe
me, there wasn’t anybody on that
track who had more pressure on him
than Jeremy.”
Richmond was the peak moment
in a lifetime devoted to racing.
Mayfield, who turns 36 this season,
actually wore out a ground oval track
with his toy motorcycle in his grandmother’s
backyard when he was only
4. The Owensboro, Ky., native graduated
to go-karts and then the Street
Stock division at the Kentucky Motor
Speedway. By age 19, he had moved
The racing community took to Nashville to work for Sadler
“WE STUCK
TOGETHER.
THAT’S HOW WE ENDED UP
LIKE WE DID.”
LEFT: In the pit with
Jeremy Mayfield’s crew.
—JEREMY MAYFIELD
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