Mayfield's Map to ... Homestead

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

This week: The Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway

Wouldn't you know it -- Ray's shuffled up the organization this weekend. But he's done everything within the family, so is that just like switching the cousins' seating arrangement around during Thanksgiving?

Jeremy: Pretty much. I mean, that's kind of close and that would be a good way to look at it.

	Shana and Jeremy Mayfield
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To move the team directors and car directors and engineers around within the organization is better than bringing an outsider -- a stranger -- into your family and making all your cousins and brothers and sisters move and let them sit in your place, you know?

So I think it's been good and it should be a good thing for all of us. Really, it's not going to be any different -- no, it's going to be a lot different, but it's not like going to a new team or starting all over or anything like that.

We're pretty familiar with everybody on the team and they're all familiar with us.

During the season, how much interaction was there between the different team directors and the engineers and all of them -- how many mass meetings were there? Was that a weekly thing?

Jeremy: Oh yeah -- that was a daily thing, too, where they have meetings. I know once a week, they've have, just an engineering meeting and on Tuesdays they'd have an all the heads of departments meeting.

Kasey and I are invited sometimes, though we don't go to all of those meetings. But there are a lot of meetings with the engineers about what's going on and what we're doing in the future as well as what's going on with the day to day stuff.

Up to this point, this year it seems like the teams had gotten away from that, not stopping the meetings, but the engineers working together and being a total team effort.

I think that's what Ray's trying to get back into the teams now -- is what we had last year.

Jeremy, back when you were racing street stocks so many years ago -- did you ever think you'd be working so much with engineers -- and how has that adjustment been?

Jeremy: Well, you know, being an engineer myself, it hasn't been too bad.

Shana: He'll give Ryan Newman a run for his money, I'll betcha, with that Purdue engineering degree .

He's got one from ... I forgot the name of his high school.

Jeremy: I think it's common sense engineering.

Shana: Yeah, he does have a common sense engineering degree.

Jeremy: Yeah, right straight out of Davis County High School.

Shana: There you go ... it was Davis County High School.

Jeremy: Back then; I never knew what the sport was going to be. Even three or four or five years ago, there were a lot of engineers in the sport, but it wasn't as engineering-based as it is in today's time.

Shana: But you still have to have that old-school feel. You have to have that engineering mentality along with, as Jeremy was saying, that common sense aspect you get from working on your cars from whenever you could work on them.

He's the kind of driver that you can ask him anything and he can pretty much tell you what the car is doing. You've got to have the driver-engineer relationship where the engineer can say, "Maybe it is a standard adjustment we can do" -- whereas Jeremy doesn't mind if it's something he doesn't even understand, that the engineer could do or come up with.

I think that's a good balance that Ray has got, with all the engineers and with Jeremy growing up and doing things and the background that he's got -- where he can contribute a lot because he knows a lot about his car.

So it's a pretty good balance because I think Jeremy has been a crew chief, fabricator and a driver -- so he's a good plus to have in that situation.

He can pretty much get along with anybody, so I think having an engineer around him opens his mind a lot just like him being around an engineer opens up the engineer's mind a lot.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Shana: It's kind of a cool combination.

Mayfield's MapJeremy and Shana talk about the season finale at Homestead Sign up for TrackPass now BUY YOUR NEXTEL DRIVER PHONE

Jeremy: And I guess, in racing anymore you can't just come in and change the world, and the sport. This is what NASCAR was made of, is seat of the pants engineering.

We're not going to become a Formula 1-type series, or anything like that, so just because you're an engineer doesn't mean you can just walk in and make things happen in our sport, and that's the nice thing about it.

You've got to have a little bit of the racing experience, for sure and be more of a racer-type or leader-type of an engineer any more, I guess you'd say, to be in our situation.

We've got team managers who are engineers but they're racers that understand the whole sport.

Shana: You can't just rely on simulations, you've got to rely on feedback from the driver and there's still the human element -- that seat of the pants feel.

Jeremy: The thing that I notice is that you've got to learn how to communicate with the engineers. And that's hard to do sometimes, especially with the way that I talk.

Well, that's what I was going to say, have you taught each other any new words?

Jeremy: Well, yeah -- I've learned a lot of words, and I've taught them stuff, I'm sure. Though, I'm not sure that the stuff coming out of my mouth is actually words, sometimes.

Shana: No, actually, we were on the plane the other night and he busted out with some big word, and I was like, 'Where did you learn that?'

And he was like, 'See, I'm getting around these really smart people and my vocabulary is expanding a lot.'

Jeremy: I'm starting to use a lot of other words like 'and,' 'is' and 'but.'

But the main thing is I think that every team out there that has engineers that are making all the decisions struggles with that a little bit. You have to be able to communicate, and they have to be able to understand on their end that what we're feeling is right -- and that's something we've got now.

I feel like we've got good engineers on our race teams and that's what Ray did this week, is put them in the right positions to make the best calls and the best decisions.

Just because you've got a race team and you hire engineers, doesn't mean that the engineers fire up the race team. You've got to put them in the right place and that's something that Ray is very good at -- is putting all the right people in the right places.

And he's still shuffling his Rubik's Cube around, trying to get all the colors to match up and to get all the blocks in the right spots and that's what he's done, here this week.

This week, we're coming to the finale of the Chase for the Nextel Cup, but off-track stuff has kind of been dominating the news as well, with Kurt Busch, the defending series champion, getting suspended. Jeremy, do you guys understand the ramifications of what your contract says in relation to your off-track behavior?

Jeremy: Oh yeah -- I think that all of us know that. That's something where you've got to have a little bit of maturity along with discipline amongst yourself as a driver, to try not to get yourself in any type situation that may occur.

I'm not sure exactly what happened on Kurt's deal, but I do know that -- or I doubt, with all honesty -- that he was driving drunk. I'd almost bet that he wasn't.

I don't know what his test results showed, but I don't think he really did as much wrong, as far as his contract was concerned, as much as it may have turned out to appear after it was all over with.

Shana: And I also think, or you've read or you hear -- and I don't know how much of that is true either -- that supposedly he mouthed off or tried to use who he was to try to get out of things.

You open yourself up to things like that when you try to get yourself out of situations -- and instead of just cooperating and admitting you were speeding, or whatever you were doing, that would have probably have been the easier route.

But I'm sure he was upset that he got pulled over and the situation kind of exploded from there.

Jeremy: Right.

Shana: But you know, you're targets anyway. It's just like in any professional sport. If somebody's out in a bar or they see you doing anything, you've got a target on your back, anyway.

Because they know they can go after your money, or sue you or anything -- so it's like, you've seen people learn the hard way, like Shane Hmiel, Tyler Walker and other people who have just gotten themselves in situations -- which, I think Kurt's is totally different -- but you still have to think about things you do before you do them.

Jeremy and I -- people rag on us a lot because we're always home and we just hang out. But you kind of have to know that it's hard to go out in public places and do normal things because you put yourself in the spotlight, and people look up to you.

You just don't race on Sunday, but Monday through Saturday you're also Jeremy Mayfield and you drive for Evernham Motorsports and you've got to carry yourself as a reflection of your boss and your sponsors and everybody else.

I hate that for Kurt and it probably did get blown way out of proportion but you've always got to remember that you were blessed with this life and yet it comes with a lot of sacrifices -- and some of that is losing some of the normalcy in life, you know?

Speaking of perspectives, can you believe the season is all but over?

Shana: Oh my gosh -- I can't. It's so weird, because I get so excited saying, 'Yay, there's one more to go and then there will be a good break.'

And about two weeks after Homestead I'm like, 'Gosh, I'm ready to go to Daytona,' because you're so excited about that.

Like Jeremy always says, it's kind of like gambling -- you never know what the next hand's going to hold or what the next spin is going to bring, so you're like, 'Oh my God' -- because you don't know what's going to happen next year.

So you're kind of excited to see what happens -- especially with the new group of guys around you. You know, it will be a good test to see what happens this weekend.

It will be fun and it will just be something new, next year. But it's hard, because we've got a lot on our plates in the off-season, so we'll keep busy, and I think it will probably go by pretty fast.

Jeremy: Yeah, I'm already pumped up and excited about next year. This is probably the first time in a long time that I've really been excited.

Here it is, the end of the year where you should be tired and ready for a break -- and I'm ready to go again next year already. I'm pretty excited about it because it's kind of a new team for me.

Chris Andrews is going to be the team manager / crew chief and I'm just excited about that, already, so when it's over, it's going to be a long winter, for me.

What do you think about ending the season in South Florida -- good, bad or indifferent?

Shana: I don't know. I kind of wish it would end, maybe, up here in North Carolina -- you know, at home. I think that that would be kind of cool to have your finale in Charlotte because you would be here and your off-season starts right away, without having to come home.

Jeremy: It's got nice weather .

Shana: Miami is a cool place, but it makes it real hard to leave afterward, because it's so nice and so beautiful.

You kind of want to leave there and go to the Bahamas -- but then you kind of burn out on getting ready for New York and the banquet. But Miami's a beautiful place to go so it really doesn't matter to me.

We've run well there so either way, it's cool with me.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Like you say, with the banquet on the near horizon, do you have any plans to hang out in South Florida after the Ford 400?

Shana: No, I think we're going to head back home and start planning for our trip to the banquet.

Jeremy: Just being home for a while is our vacation.

Shana: Exactly. I've got to make sure that Jeremy has got a tux he can wear to the banquet. I've got to get him all decked-out.

We're going to a New Jersey Nets game and we've got a couple appearances going on in New York, so we've got to make sure his clothing attire is ready to go.

Jeremy: I tried my tux on the other day and I went to fix my hair and my bicep ripped my sleeve out.

Shana: Yeah , so we've got to get him a new one. His body has changed a little bit from last year.

Jeremy: I'm a little more buff, you know?

What's Thanksgiving looking like?

Jeremy: We're just going to hang out here, again. We're not sure what we're going to do, yet.

That's the week right after Homestead, so that's going to be our vacation week so we're not going to do a whole lot.

We're probably going to the Harveys -- Brian and Lisa Harvey's house -- and eat all their food up. We're going to go there and sneak in on them and steal a turkey or something.

What do the girls think about Thanksgiving? Are they turkey fans?

Shana: Oh my God -- they're fans of any kind of food.

Jeremy: They're looking forward to it, man -- I'll tell you.

Shana: Yeah, Lisa Harvey said I could bring them over there and I was like, 'I don't think you want that!' But I think we might take them all over there.

Jeremy: Izzy could probably eat the whole turkey.

Somehow, I think they'd be big gravy fans. I'm just thinking Mattie would be a big gravy eater.

Shana: Yeah, and they love macaroni and cheese.

Jeremy: Max likes cranberries -- cranberry whatever you call that stuff you eat with turkey at Thanksgiving.

Shana: Cranberry sauce.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Shana, the days are counting down, so how's the gown shopping been going for New York?

Shana: I've already bought mine.

Jeremy: It's blue.

Shana: It is not blue. I'm not telling you what color it is, but I've already bought mine.

Jeremy: It's black.

Shana: No, it's not black . It went real well. Usually I'm still looking. I like things that are pretty different.

Jeremy: Yeah, this one is pretty cool. It's got, like, some chains and stuff on it.

Shana: No. No chains, no metal or nothing like that. No diamond-flake.

Now, how long of an ordeal was that? Jeremy, I figured that would have been a good time to go looking for a new bush hog?

Jeremy: You know, that's what I'm thinking. I'm going to go up here and find me a tractor parts supply.

Shana: No. I went one day and I tried on a couple of dresses. About the fourth one I tried on, I absolutely fell in love with it.

So they ordered it for me and I've been back a few times for fittings and I go to pick it up next Monday.

Jeremy: If you've ever seen 'Hee-Haw,' it's like that girl on Hee-Haw used to wear.

Shana: It is so not.

Jeremy: You know, the one that spreads out -- fans out?

Shana: No. It's not.

Jeremy: You ever watch Hee-Haw?

Shana: It's beautiful and I'm very happy with it. It's probably my favorite banquet dress yet -- by far.

Word Association: Homestead

The Keys

Jeremy: Lost 'em.

Shana: Beautiful.

Palm Trees

Jeremy: Ours didn't make it. Gilligan.

Shana: Coconuts.

Season Finale

Jeremy: Can't wait for Daytona. Victory Lane burnout.

Shana: Bittersweet.