Mayfield's Map to ... Dover

Each week throughout the season, Jeremy and Shana Mayfield share their memories of that weekend's racetrack -- and the happenings around it.

This week: Dover International Speedway

	Shana and Jeremy Mayfield
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Going in and out of Dover, you have a choice of airports -- either coming from the north, from Philly; or the south, from Baltimore. Which do you guys choose, or do you use a local FBO?

Jeremy Mayfield: We have our own plane that we fly into the local Air Force Base there -- Dover Air Force Base. I'm not sure how you'd get in there any other way because that's the only way I know to get in there.

I know, like you say that there are other airports around there, but the one I've always flown into and been accustomed to is Dover Air Force Base.

Dover, I assume, is one of the more infamous exit nightmares on the circuit. What's your exit strategy from Dover -- helicopters from the Busch garage?

Shana Mayfield: Definitely.

Jeremy Mayfield: We normally helicopter out of the Busch garage. In the past, we've driven out of there. And it's wild.

But, you still can get out of there about as quick as you can anywhere else we go. But usually by the time you get out of there and you get to the airport, you're fighting mad -- especially if you had a bad day.

It's not that you're mad at anybody, but it's just the traffic and the way things are going. People are blowing their horns and running into each other and everything else.

And you always run into the security guards that don't want to let you go the way you need to go, again.

So we've decided the best thing for us, to keep us calm and cool and collected is to helicopter out of there.

Dover's the unique marriage of an auto racing and horse racing facility. Jeremy, you ever get the urge to take the rental car and do a hot lap on the horse track?

Jeremy Mayfield: Yeah -- I've thought about that, because the motorhome lot is real close to that.

I've been around a lot of horse tracks in the past and actually ran my racecar during the Kentucky Derby on the horse track. So I've definitely thought about running around Dover.

But I thought it might stir up too much dust and I'd get in trouble over it. But it would be fun. I've actually raced ARCA cars on a horse track, also.

So I'm kind of familiar with racing on horse tracks. So if I could take my rental car around there I could probably cut a pretty good lap.

Springfield, and DuQuoin, that was?

Jeremy Mayfield: It was just like that -- one mile around and guard rails on the inside.

Shana Mayfield: Wow.

You ever go to Sambo's while you're in Dover, and what's your take on seafood in general?

Shana Mayfield: Ha ha ... Jeremy's not a big seafood person unless it's Long John Silver's or Captain D's.

Jeremy Mayfield: I like fish. I like crab legs -- those are good. I like busting them all up.

Shana Mayfield: Yeah, crab legs. But he's kind of finicky on fresh seafood and the odor. He's one of these people you take him to dinner and he cuts up and he does this deal (making a face) when he smells it.

If it doesn't smell right, he's not going to eat it, so the best thing you can do is to take him to Captain D's or the other fish place.

Jeremy Mayfield: I'm just not real good about eating seafood.

Shana Mayfield: And he's real weird about eating things -- especially on race weekends -- that could make him sick. I respect that, but he doesn't want to try anything out of the norm that could potentially make him sick on a weekend.

	Inside the Numbers Jeremy Mayfield at Dover Year Start Finish 2004 1 8   1 7 2003 3 21   25 2 2002 24 35   11 20 2001 24 34   7 42 2000 5 37   1 35 1999 9 9   4 22 1998 12 5   28 3 1997 25 4   24 23 1996 39 12   36 15 1995 38 17   10 19 1994 33 24 • 21 starts • 0 wins • 4 Top-5s • 7 Top-10s • 5 DNFs • Avg. start: 17.1 • Avg. finish: 18.8

Jeremy Mayfield: But we have been to Sambo's and it is a great place -- one of the best places you could recommend to anybody.

But the only thing about seafood that I don't understand is when you get the lobster, and I just can't handle when they bring it to you and it's sitting there looking at you.

It's still got its eyes and everything. I just can't do that. I'm just not one for that.

Shana Mayfield: Or you walk into the restaurant and you see them in the tank, and you know you're going to eat one of them -- and that's kind of tough.

Jeremy Mayfield: Here's something else that's hurt me on seafood. The shrimp. When I was little I used to go to this creek, near Owensboro, Ky., where I grew up -- and catch crawdads.

If you've ever caught crawdads before in a creek and they're just nasty old muddy things -- and then you go look at shrimp. You don't ever want to eat shrimp if you know what a crawdad is.

So I can't do that, man. Because it's either looking at me, or it reminds me of something I used to catch in Panther Creek in Kentucky.

Dover is the first chance the series gets to head north -- so what's the fan experience like for you in Dover?

Jeremy Mayfield: I love Dover -- it's one of my favorite racetracks. The fans are just great.

It's funny, but everywhere you go we see all different kinds of fans, and it's wild.

You get to see the differences in all of them and the way they react. Who they pull for and all that, and it's just cool to see that.

And at Dover, we usually run into a lot of them because she likes to gamble all the time.

Shana Mayfield: No, no -- he likes to gamble. Ask his business manager or his secretary about that. We usually get our butts chewed by the time we get home because we get cash advances or a credit card.

Jeremy Mayfield: That's because they won't give me any money to go, so I say, "All right, I'll just use that card and show you."

Shana Mayfield: That's what scares me when we go to Vegas, to Dover and I think Pocono is now talking about adding a casino, so it's going to be big. You better hope he wins a lot of races, or wins big at the casino.

Jeremy Mayfield: And I usually do pretty good at Dover. I haven't done good lately at Vegas. I lost my butt there, a little bit.

Shana Mayfield: And you can gamble with the fans there and they don't really bother you, but it's kind of fun.

Jeremy Mayfield: It is cool, because you see a lot of them in there.

Shana Mayfield: And there's a great little Italian restaurant we eat at, right near T.J. Maxx, right at the speedway that's really good.

Jeremy Mayfield: And the things we love to do, that's why we love Dover. We love the racetrack -- it's fast. You walk out of the racetrack, you don't have to go far and there's a casino there.

There's an Italian restaurant -- I love Italian -- and T.J. Maxx. You've got it all right there.

Shana Mayfield: And there's a Value City right up the road, so we're in business.

Jeremy Mayfield: And Best Buy is right next to that, so we're in good shape right there, man.

Shana Mayfield: And then for Izzy, Pet Smart is right there.

Jeremy Mayfield: We do take the dogs to Pet Smart. We're trying not to mention them too much because we're starting to get all these e-mails and all these people wanting to sponsor our dogs -- asking us to use them for endorsements.

We're kind of liking that, it's just going to keep us busy traveling around in their motorhome, and stuff.

Shana Mayfield: Jeremy, stop! That's not right.

Jeremy Mayfield: It's the truth -- we have gotten several e-mails about people wanting to get our dogs and to use them as part of their ads. It'd be pretty neat, if that turns out.

Shana Mayfield: We'll live off them for a while.

Jeremy Mayfield: I want to warn them -- they better jump on the bandwagon now.

ALSO Looking for something to do in Dover this weekend? Check out Rehoboth Beach.  •   Click here for details.

Rehoboth Beach has got one of the circuit's more noted go-kart facilities, so you ever go down there to ride Sprint Karts?

Shana Mayfield: No, we go to shop.

Jeremy Mayfield: We did go down there one time, didn't we?

Shana Mayfield: We did. We went down to the pier and the boardwalk, and all the little boutiques. We had a good time, but we haven't been to the Sprint Karts.

We kind of just found it one day when we were out riding around and walking around. It was neat with all the little boutiques and restaurants, so it was a neat place.

Jeremy Mayfield: It was cool. We saw Kerry Earnhardt walking on the beach with his wife. And I thought my legs were white.

Shana, do you organize any excursions to Rehoboth with the girls, since it's kind of a neat shopping enclave?

Shana Mayfield: I haven't yet, because we just kind of stumbled upon it a few years ago. DeLana (Harvick) and I have been talking about going, for a while, but it's hard getting out of the racetrack and getting back in.

I don't like leaving Jeremy for that long, and when he wants to go somewhere when the day's over, so I know I have to be back by a certain time.

But it is a cool place to go. He and I have gone a couple times, so I'm sure before it's over with DeLana and I will hit it a few times.

Jeremy Mayfield: And they do have a good hobby shop there, that's what I said.

Shana Mayfield: Maybe you and Kevin can hit the hobby shop and we can go to the boutiques.

Jeremy Mayfield: That's what we'll do.

When you're out and you're not in your driver's suit, do people recognize you?

Jeremy Mayfield: It happens a lot -- it happens a whole lot. It is wild.

Shana Mayfield: It's crazy.

Jeremy Mayfield: Just about anywhere you go, you can be dressed totally different and looking like you just got done working in a field somewhere -- ain't nobody gonna recognize you -- there ain't no way in the world.

And people recognize you, so that's pretty cool. It must be the hair, you know?

Shana Mayfield: We were in the Bahamas right after Darlington for three days, and just walking around the resort we were staying at. About 10 or 12 people came up to us.

One guy came out with a Dodge T-shirt and was like, "Hey, can you sign this?" Then we're floating in the Lazy River and he's like, "Hey, weren't you just in Darlington?"

Here we are in the Bahamas and it seems odd that someone would recognize you down there, because you're out of the mainstream of that.

I don't know -- it's just different. I guess when you're at a racetrack, or in the United States it's one thing -- but when you're hanging out in your bathing suit and soaking wet and someone's going "Hey" -- it's weird.

Jeremy Mayfield: And it's funny because, speaking of that, in Dover her and DeLana went shopping and me and Harvick went to the casino, and he and I won like eight or nine-thousand dollars one night.

We were putting money in together and then splitting it. I don't know if that's legal or not ... I was joking if it's not.

It's funny because he has this hat on and it's all pulled down because he hates it when he goes out in public -- at least, he acts like he hates it when people recognize him -- but he probably loves it.

But every time I'd catch him getting mad for being around the fans, I'd start calling out his name: "Hey, there's Kevin Harvick. Kevin Harvick." And I'll take off.

So he's sitting there in the middle of an autograph session and it works out pretty good.

Shana Mayfield: So you can gamble and put all the distraction on him?

Jeremy Mayfield: Yeah.

Dover has a unique set-up -- suites installed on a catwalk over the racetrack in Turn 3 -- do you notice that? What's your take on that type of item, from a fans' perspective?

Jeremy Mayfield: I think it's great for the fans and it's pretty wild. There's not a lot of room in there and not everybody gets to sit there.

But what's wild is, the last race probably 100 laps in a row, every time I'd go by, I'd look up, and look in the rear-view mirror and there was a guy counting down the laps: One, two, three.

Naw -- I'm kidding (laughing). She's like, "Did you really do that?" But you don't notice it at all. But it is cool

Man, that's got to be an awesome shot right there, because it's fast. They've actually got race seats that they sit in. So it's cool.

But once we're racing, we're pretty much tunnel vision -- and you don't see what's going on up there. You can do it under caution, but that place, if you look up or look over -- you'd be in trouble.

Dover Air Force Base is a noted facility, and you fly into there. What's your take on the size of those transport planes -- the C5s?

Jeremy Mayfield: They're cool. Man, she's amazed anyway at how those things fly, because they're not going fast.

Shana Mayfield: I don't see how they stay in the air. Like, when they come over for the flyover I just know they're going to stall out because it looks like they're barely even moving.

It just amazes me, because they're huge.

It seems like something that big shouldn't be able to fly?

Shana Mayfield: Yeah -- just like a cruise ship should not float. Something that big should not be in the air.

Jeremy Mayfield: I'll tell you what's wild, too. I've been on that tour where you go on that plane.

Unbelievable. You think they're big, looking at them from a distance, but the closer you get, the bigger they get.

I remember going up top where the pilots sit. When you look up they look like these little bitty windows. But it's huge -- bigger than this motorhome it seems like, just up where the pilots are.

It's just huge, man, and it's something that's amazing that anybody -- any human being in the world is smart enough and has got the technology to build or think of something that huge to make it fly.

I couldn't do that in the rest of my life. I guess that's why I don't understand -- and why we say that, but it's probably nothing for the guy that builds them or works on them all the time, to do that.

Shana Mayfield: It's just amazing.

WORD ASSOCIATION: Dover
• Concrete
Jeremy Mayfield: Fast. Rough.

• Casino
Jeremy Mayfield: Broke. Me.

• Crabs
Jeremy Mayfield: Gross. Seafood.