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Hoping for better luck Homestead has to be kinder than Phoenix was
Posted: Saturday November 13, 1999 08:37 PM
The way things ended up at Phoenix were pretty disappointing. We were sitting there looking at a really good finish. We had started 36th, but kept working our way up through the field and were sitting ninth with 50 laps to go. It was a good car -- a real good car. We were going to finish better than ninth and were thinking top five. Instead, a piece of rubber flew up in the car, hit the radiator hose and it started flopping around, knocking the belts off of everything on the engine. It decimated any chance we had. Instead of fifth, we ended up 41st. How can you control stuff like that? Well, you can't. It really cost us a lot. It was plain old bad luck. Any shot we had at finishing the year in the top 10 pretty much went out the window. We're still in it mathematically but it's not realistic. The Phoenix race is kind of what we've been through this season. We had a really great run going and it ended because of some bad luck. Bad luck is part of the deal and a lot of times you make you own luck. But we could have used a break there. If we would have had a couple of breaks this season, stuff that wasn't anybody's fault, and we could have been right in there for the top 10 of the points. But those breaks didn't come like we needed. The thing is we're still pretty excited here, excited of where we've gotten to and excited about where we're headed. We've had some really good runs, especially in the past several weeks, and we feel pretty good about that. A couple of things have happened that cost us great finishes but that's part of racing. You just put up with it and go on down the road. We're looking at these last two races as really good chances for us to show what we can do, and to get ourselves set up for next season. We can run good at Homestead and we can run good at Atlanta and, with a break or two, we can end the year with a couple of really good finishes. Rusty (Wallace) and I have as many laps in a Winston Cup car at Homestead as anybody. We tested down there a couple of times last year to help us for Pocono and Indianapolis, and I'd say two of our best tracks are Pocono and Indianapolis. It's got the slight banking and a lot of the same kinds of setups you use for those tracks. I really feel anybody who runs good at Pocono is going to run good at Homestead. Since Pocono is my favorite track and since we've run as good there as we have anywhere, I'd say we'll be somebody to reckon with at Homestead. We have a really good idea on setups and on what we need to do. We know what it takes to get around Homestead. I'm sure plenty of guys will start figuring it out once they get some track time there but I feel better about being able to go in with a leg up on most everybody else. I think it will be a good race. It's wide enough for some passing, long enough that you need some horsepower and tricky enough in the corners to really make you have the chassis just right. A good setup with some good horsepower is going to be pretty hard to beat at Homestead. We think that's the kind of track we're suited for and we think this Mobil 1 Taurus team is going to have a pretty good weekend there. We're taking a specially-designed paint scheme to Homestead, one that celebrates the 25th anniversary of Mobil 1. It's the same paint scheme we had for Phoenix, and it's pretty cool with the black and silver. I'm trying to talk them into staying with it for next season but we'll be back with the regular blue with the Pegasus on the quarterpanels by the last race at Atlanta. Mobil's doing a big collectible deal around this car, which is pretty neat. Most of the Mobil service stations are giving the die-cast cars away or selling them at a really low price when you buy Mobil 1 products. It's the biggest consumer deal they've done with us so far and we're pretty excited about it. We want to win on the race track a lot, but winning off the track is pretty big too. You might be surprised how much teams and drivers keep up with the marketing. Maybe if we can get this special paint scheme to victory lane at Homestead, everybody will take another look at staying with it permanently.
Jeremy Mayfield drives the No. 12 Ford Taurus for Penske-Kranefuss
Racing on the Winston Cup circuit. His column appears every
Wednesday on CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely
those of the writer.
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