Tired of ads? Subscribers enjoy a distraction-free reading experience.
Click here to subscribe today or Login.

By JOE PETRUCCI [email protected]
Sunday, June 13, 2004     Page: 3C

LONG POND – It’s hard to believe it’s been six years since Jeremy
Mayfield’s famous last-lap pass of the late Dale Earnhardt gave Mayfield his
first career victory at Pocono Raceway.
   
The way Mayfield talks about it, it seems like just yesterday.
    “That’s the story of my career it seems like and definitely the highlight
of my career,” said Mayfield, who is looking for his fourth career NEXTEL Cup
win and first since he found victory lane at Pocono again in 2000. He’ll start
from the seventh position in today’s Pocono 500.
   
Mayfield, who had been chasing Earnhardt in the final laps of the 1998
Pocono 500, bumped Earnhardt as The Intimidator slowed entering the last turn.
Mayfield passed him to win.
   
“It surprised me about like it did everyone else,” said Mayfield, the
lone driver in NEXTEL Cup history to earn his first career win at Pocono.
   
Besides earning the respect of fellow drivers because he didn’t back down
from Earnhardt, Mayfield also discovered one of his favorite tracks.
   
In 19 starts here, he has two wins, three top-five finishes and seven top
10s. He’s led five races for 182 laps. He’s one of only eight active drivers
to win twice at Pocono. He started third in his ’98 victory and 22nd in his
2000 victory.
   
“I’m not sure what it is. It’s one of the places early in my career I
adapted to real quick,” said Mayfield, a native of Owensboro, Ky. “I like
going there. I like going there, I like racing there, it just seems like my
confidence level is up every time I walk in the gate.”
   
Although the late pass in ’98 was memorable, Mayfield talked just as much
about the jostling between him and Earnhardt that carried on with both running
in the top five for much of the race.
   
Mayfield had started to run well before Pocono and continued that stretch
on June 1, a day after the Pocono 500 was postponed because of rain and fog.
   
Earnhardt would get behind Mayfield and get him loose, then Mayfield would
return the favor a few minutes later. With about 30 laps to go, Mayfield and
Earnhardt hit pit road for two tires each. Coming out of the stop, Earnhardt
was the leader with Mayfield right behind him.
   
With about five laps to go, it was a dead heat.
   
“We were just nose to tail,” said Mayfield, currently 15th in the points
standings with one top five and four top 10s this season, including an
eighth-place finish last weekend at Dover. “We went into the tunnel turn (on
the last lap) and he pushed up a little bit and allowed me to get a run.”
   
That’s when Mayfield saw what he called a “perfect situation.”
   
“I really wasn’t expecting to move him out of the way. The way he is you
can bump him and it won’t faze him and when I drove up behind him it took the
air off of him and he got loose and then we were in position to win the
race.”
   
That’s exactly what Mayfield did. While he got thumbs up from other teams’
crew members for doing to Earnhardt what Earnhardt had done to so many through
the years, The Intimidator drove by Mayfield and offered the youngster a
different finger.
   
“I told him he was No. 1,” Earnhardt famously said at the time.
   
Mayfield, in his No. 19 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge, will start seventh in
today’s Pocono 500. It will be the first time he races with an in-house
Evernham Motorsports chassis. Judging by past history, Pocono’s not a bad
place for Mayfield to try something new.
   
“(It’s) just one of the places I always seem to run decent at, but yet
I’ve had bad runs there, too. It’s either I’m real good or real bad. It’s
definitely a place I like.”