Conversation: Jeremy Mayfield

BROOKLYN, Mich. -- He might be better known as the guy who picks up his gasoline-perfumed date in a No. 19 Dodge race car, but that really is just an act for Jeremy Mayfield.

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Truth be told, Mayfield is happily married, tying the knot earlier this year. And his race car is limited to NASCAR Winston Cup tracks.

And even though Mayfield's numbers haven't been as good as he would have hoped, he recently fended off rumors of an imminent departure from Evernham Motorsports by a series of decent finishes.

	Mayfield has three career wins -- two have come at Pocono. Credit: Autostock

Mayfield is entrenched in one of Ray Evernham's Dodges, and he hopes things continue to get better.

Recently, Mayfield spoke with NASCAR.com's Lee Montgomery about Evernham and his well-funded team, about getting along with crew chief Kenny Francis, about his Pug dogs and, of course, about women's perfume.

First of all, I hear you've got another woman in your life named Mattie.

Mayfield: Yeah, Mattie, that's right. She's a little Pug. We have four of them, four Pug dogs. They're great friends and good companions.

She's the only one that gets to travel with us. She's the lucky one, and we have a lot of fun with her. I know people have seen her on TV. She's an awesome, awesome little dog, and we take her everywhere.

And truthfully, what kind of women's perfume do you realty prefer?

Mayfield: Well, octane 93 is a good, all-around, everyday type of perfume.

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But if you really want to get down to it, and you're having a nice dinner or something, you can go to 103 or add some octane booster - 104's pretty good.

Any time you go to a real wild place, a nightclub or something like that, every once in a while, you'll catch someone with a little nitro on.

Do women come up to you and say, 'Hey, smell my perfume' or crazy stuff like that?

Mayfield: Oh, yeah, they love it. It's a big deal. These women are just going crazy over octane 93. The good thing about it, you can get it at any gas station.

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You can pull up anywhere, and most of them have octane 93. It's something you can buy by the gallon. You don't have to buy it by the bottle.

Oh, Lord.

(Evernham walks past and nudges Mayfield, who breaks out laughing)

Mayfield: He's all right. He's cool.

Evernham: You're doing interviews, and you should be doing victory lane interviews.

Mayfield: See what I mean?

You're still a newlywed. Do things really change after you get married?

Mayfield: Somewhat. Nah, it's good. Shana's a good girl and has been great for me. We get along great, and that's the good thing about it.

We get along as good as we did when we first met. Even after we got married, we still get along. She's a lot of fun, and we have fun together.

She goes everywhere with me, her and Mattie. I call Mattie 'Big Momma.' She's not really overweight; she's big-boned - not Shana, Mattie.

Yeah, you better get that straight.

Mayfield: Right.

All right, on to racing a little bit. You hit on this a little bit before. Aren't you glad you're not in the rumor mill any more? Is that ever a distraction?

Mayfield: Oh, it's a huge distraction. That's something that you're seeing the 20 car go through right now. It's something you don't want to be a part of. I just want to stay settled in here.

This is where I want to be, and I know that we can win races here and run good. It's just a matter of the chemistry, keeping everything together and people working together and understanding what each other really mean when they say something.

That's just communication, and it happens with any team, any basketball team, football or race team, whatever. That's what you've got to have to be good and successful with it.

Chemistry is obviously a big issue in this garage. Have you and Kenny done anything special to try to develop that and build that up?

Mayfield: Yeah, we have. A lot of it is just getting to know each other and every once in a while, stopping yourself and going, 'Man, what can I do to maybe communicate better?'

Or 'How can I be better at helping the chemistry part of this deal?' For a while, you think that the way you do things, the way your personality is, the way you handle things is the way is the way they should be.

That's part of being a guy, I'd guess you'd say. I don't want the ladies to hear this, but ego is a little bit involved.

But sometimes you've got to stop and go, 'Wait a minute. Maybe I can contribute a lot here, as far as changing the way I do things, the way I say things.'

I think we've all done that, and we've stopped and had conversations like that throughout this year. We're just trying to help get that chemistry better quicker.

Do you and Kenny do stuff off the track to do that? Or is it pretty much limited to the garage area?

	Ray Evernham

Mayfield: It's pretty much limited to here and the shop. Sometimes, we'll go out to eat and stuff. But really, they work so much during the week, and we're traveling all the time that we don't get to spend much personal time together as we do company time.

But we always joke around, cut up and have a good time. When things are going bad, you've got to release some of it somehow. So we have a good time here.

You can't kick the dog.

Mayfield: No. No kicking the dog, that's for sure.

Do you call him your crew chief, even though he's got some other convoluted title?

Mayfield: Yeah, I look at Kenny like that, as a crew chief. I know we've got a little bit different structure here, but you look at it that way. Josh is the engineer, Mike Shipp is the car chief.

Of course, Ray's always there to look over the whole organization and see what's going on. We bounce a lot of stuff off him all the time. It's still kind of normal. I know it's structured kind of different, but it still works kind of the same way a normal race team would.

Ray obviously has a lot of resources at his disposal, engineering wise and everything else. No. 1, are you kind of surprised at how much he has? All the toys, all the gadgets and stuff to work on these cars.

Mayfield: That's something we have here, a lot of stuff to do things. That's pretty neat. Really, it's pretty neat to see that Dodge supports their programs like they do.

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The only thing I don't like is we've got the best crew chief in the world, and we're just wasting him. He's on top of the truck as owner now. We can't get him back.

That's the bad part about it. We tease him with that all the time. We give him a little taste of it. He gets to come in and help us every once in a while. It's nice to know that you've got that kind of knowledge and experience behind you.

You can go and ask him about anything you want to ask him. He's been there and done that, so it's pretty neat.

Is there a chance at all of over-engineering? Or is there too much involved to keep everything straight?

Mayfield: You can definitely over-engineer things. You find yourself going off in one direction sometimes, and it can either be under-engineered or over-engineered.

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It can go both ways on that. Sometimes, you've got to have the common-sense type racer who's been around, who's got the common-sense experience to help guide you along the way.

You almost have to have both of them. You've got to have a great engineering program going, along with a good common-sense racing package alongside of it to pull even loads.

When you get one pulling more than the other, then it's under-engineered or over-engineered. It's pretty tough to find that balance.

Where are you in that equation? Are you over on the grounded racer side?

Mayfield: I'm more of the common-sense racer. But I do know that you have to have a lot of engineering knowledge to help get you to the next level. I've got to be open-minded on that.

I feel like I'm just floating along here. I float from side-to-side. I can go over here with the engineers, and come back over on the race side of it. I kind of feel like I'm the redneck engineer.

I'd rather think of the stuff, come up with some really wild ideas, and let them figure out how it works.

I don't want to say you've struggled, but you guys haven't been as competitive as you'd like.

Mayfield: You can call it struggling.

All right. Is that just kind of a sign of how difficult this business really is. Here's Ray with all these championships and all the resources at his disposal, two great drivers, and yet you're not running as well as you need to be.

Mayfield: There again, that goes back to having all the resources in the world and all the equipment, but if you don't have the chemistry and get the best out of that stuff, then that makes it tough.

It looks like we've struggle, but we've really gained a lot of knowledge to do and what not to do. One day, when we do hit it for sure, it's going to be a solid deal where it's week in and week out.

That's what we're shooting for. There again, it's trying to find a balance, whether it's chemistry or chassis balance, aero balance, whatever. You're always looking to find it.

Once we find it, we're going to understand why and how we got there.