Mayfield keeps confidence no matter what lies ahead

Jeremy Mayfield has proven plenty in his 15-year Cup Series driving career, like, what it takes to win races -- which he's done five times -- and to contend for championships, which he did under both of NASCAR's recent point structures.

It's made him a competent and confident Sprint Cup driver -- and one whose achievements elevate him above the level of an average wheelman. It made him confident enough to enter the 2008 season at Haas CNC Racing without a contract.

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Was coming to a relatively new team with relatively little in the way of previous achievement a challenge? It sure was. But Mayfield was confident he and team management were on the same page.

It's too bad they weren't. Mayfield and Haas CNC general manager Joe Custer agreed following the event at Texas to make a change -- even though the originally proposed change was only for one race.

"Sometimes these things just don't work out," Mayfield said. "This was going to take time. I had it, I was committed to it. But someone felt like they had to do something."

Sometimes racers can feel backed into a corner, and they have to make choices. Mayfield chose to take the challenge of seeing what the next step in his driving career would be.

Mayfield's never been one to shrink from a challenge. If he was, he never would have knocked Dale Earnhardt out of the way to win at Pocono in 2000 for owner Roger Penske, a moment he calls his career highlight.

It wasn't the only one.

NASCAR's Chase format, which was designed to produce excitement, has never done as much as in 2004. With Kurt Busch's wheel-shedding, down-to-the-wire championship a scintillating finale, Mayfield did the ultimate man-up move and in a must-win situation. He won the Chase cutoff race at Richmond to make the inaugural 10-man championship field.

Nothing like that has ever happened at RIR since, save for Mayfield's former teammate Kasey Kahne finishing third there in 2006 to gain entry into the Chase.

Once again in 2005, when a berth in the second Chase was nowhere near certain, Mayfield, crew chief Slugger Labbe and Mayfield's team architect, Kenny Francis, engineered a key strategic victory at Michigan, and locked themselves into a second consecutive Chase.

But in the face of these achievements, which had occurred in concert with his race team becoming a solid, connected unit, Mayfield was then faced with maybe his greatest challenge to that point: the loss of his crew chief and reacquainting himself with a new team, even though things had all been shuffled within the same Evernham organization.

"These things take time to put together, and it takes time to start to make things happen," Mayfield said. "What Kenny Francis and I did at Evernham's didn't happen overnight -- it took us three years. But we got better and better and then we made the Chase for two years in a row."

What irony there is in the fact that the only episode in the Chase cutoffs since Mayfield's stunning victory that even comes within 500 miles of it came in 2006, when Francis engineered Kahne's entry.

Haas CNC Racing and Jeremy Mayfield parted ways before the Cup Series race at Phoenix.

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And it's no coincidence that the 19 team now situated at Gillett Evernham Motorsports, which Mayfield and Francis built into a contender over a three-year period, hasn't come close to achieving the same level of performance since Mayfield left in the summer of 2006.

But God bless him, Mayfield's holding his head up. He's maintained his confidence, and his class. He ain't pissing and moaning -- not even one syllable.

"They've got great stuff at Haas CNC -- and the guys were great, great to work with and they worked hard," Mayfield gushed, not much having to be prompted. "They were a young team. They needed experience. But I thought I could bring that to them and help them to build something."

You have to absolutely worm out of him that more than once his crew apologized after races for putting in wedge instead of taking it out and raising the track bar rather than lowering it when Mayfield and crew chief Dave Skog had agreed on the changes that the car needed, which they expected would be made.

Mayfield left the pits and had to be shaking his head in the car when its performance was nowhere near what he and Skog had expected. And he'd spend the rest of the race wondering what was wrong.

He was almost pop-eyed at Texas, his final race in the Haas CNC car, when the crew in the adjacent pit stall began gesturing wildly at Mayfield not to leave his pit stall during a stop. It turned out, when the car was jacked up, the chain that holds the rear-end housing in place had snapped, the rear end dropped and a rear spring fell out on pit road.

Yeah -- that's probably got a few of you shaking your heads, now. But what kind of character does Mayfield have?

He didn't sneer when he told the tale; didn't laugh. Can you believe it -- he actually supported the guys he has been given the privilege of no longer working with, no matter how much he appreciated them and enjoyed the opportunity.

"These things aren't supposed to happen, but they do happen," he said. "I think it was going to get better. I can tell you this, they have great stuff -- everything they need to do well.

"The owners, Gene Haas and his mother, Margaret, who actually owned my car, were so easy to work with and they were real supportive. That's maybe the most unfortunate thing, to have that situation pass on."

Haas CNC doing well is a project, as they say in the NBA of that 19-year-old string bean who can dunk with his teeth but needs some seasoning and refinement. Mayfield was willing to spend the time on it, and he obviously and honestly thought he had it.

And now, Mayfield's not sure what's next, though as a racer he wants to race. But his choice, whether it's in Sprint Cup, Nationwide or the Craftsman Truck Series, is going to be something that can win.

He's been there and knows he can get it done again. Right now, he's not sure how much time he'll be spending at racetracks in the short term. The conversations on future possibilities have been flowing in both directions, he said.

But he won't be sitting still, either.

You want to talk about honor, and character? Now, don't take this the wrong way -- Mayfield's a racer, always has been, always will be. And his career is important to him.

But when the Sprint Cup Series is at Darlington and the all-star race, Mayfield will be part of an entourage touring United States military installations in Iraq from May 6-17 and supporting the troops.

It's similar to a journey former Busch Series rookie of the year Jeff Fuller and two-time champion Randy LaJoie made prior to Bristol, actually to Afghanistan with drag racer Hillary Will and others.

For that commitment, Mayfield will always be on my hero's honor roll, even if he never comes close to winning another NASCAR race.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.