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It's all about loyalty, family
Posted: Sunday February 20, 2000 08:34 PM
Well, the Daytona 500 is done and now we're ready to start the season. I guess that sounds kind of weird but it really is the way things are. The Daytona 500 is our biggest race of the season, and it's different to start the season with your biggest race. We're in Daytona Beach for two weeks and it can be a long two weeks. Once you leave there, though, you feel like the real season has begun. We finished 11th in the Daytona 500 and we'll take it. We didn't qualify as well as I had hoped we would, we practiced a little better than that and we were solid -- not spectacular, but solid -- in our 125-mile qualifying race. We spent the better part of the 500 trying to break traffic and get in the lead draft. After playing "pinball" with everybody those last 20 laps, we came from 20th at the end to finish 11th. So we'll head to Rockingham this week (Sunday's Kmart 400) ready to start fresh. Coming back to North Carolina will be nice. I go to Rockingham early Thursday. DeWitt Trucking, who are good friends of the North Carolina Speedway, asked me to come by, so we're going to visit there. Then we go to Bill Smith Ford in Southern Pines, N.C., for an appearance. They treat me pretty good and Bill Smith is a big race fan, starting out with Junie Donlavey years ago, and later Bill Elliott. I'm just glad he got to me. That's another reason I wanted to mention them -- loyalty. That's a big deal in our sport and it's an important deal. I like to think it's one of the real virtues of stock car racing, and I think we have a lot of virtues. There has been a lot going on in professional sports -- stuff off the field -- the past few months. Two professional football players charged with murder in separate incidents; a professional basketball player killed and others injured when he allegedly speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour down a public; thoroughfare; a professional baseball player going on the record with a national sports magazine, one frequently read by children, in regards to his prejudices and bigotries. The players of every major professional sports league have been on strike in the recent past, and there is some talk about a "strike" by college athletes in major sports. You can't sit back and say, "Hey, this isn't going to happen to us," because it could. To be honest, though, I don't see it happening -- at least not to the extent it's happening in some other sports. The people in NASCAR racing have a different kind of background, for one thing. There is a "family thing" about our sport. I had a teacher tell me one time that if you always behave like your mom is there with you, you will always behave. Well, in this sport, your mom is there a lot. She sees what's going on on television is she isn't there. And if it's not your mom, it's your wife or your kids. The drivers bring their families with them when they can. In the drivers' motorhome lot you see the kids out all the time, playing and having a good time. It's pretty hard to go somewhere and get into a bar fight if you're sitting at "home" and spending time with your family. Now, I don't have any kids but most of my (driver) friends do. My crew chief (Peter Sospenzo) bring his little girl to the track sometimes. I'm not going to act any way in front of those kids that is anything but as good as I can be. I don't know. Maybe for a professional basketball player it might be a boring life but, for me and for a lot of the guys here, it's fun. We'll go to Rockingham this weekend, and we'll practice and qualify all day Friday. We'll work on the car until they close the garage. I'll go to the motorhome and eat dinner or whatever. That night, I'll get with Peter and Michael (Kranefuss) and we'll talk about what we're going to do Saturday and Sunday with the car. Maybe some of the other guys (on the crew) will be there too. That might be the biggest difference of all. To reach this point in racing, you pretty much have to eat, breathe and sleep racing and race cars. That's been my main focus since I was 10 years old and that's pretty much what I spend my time on. I'd rather work on race cars and drive race cars than anything. If I can't do that -- which I can't when the track is closed -- then I'd rather talk about working on race cars and talk about driving race cars than anything else. And I think that's what a whole lot of people in this sport want to do. I don't know that we're necessarily better people or anything like that. I just think the people in our sport just have different priorities than the people in other sports. Maybe they don't sit around for a few hours after a game, eat dinner and talk about jump shots. The people in racing, if they were in basketball, I think that's what they'd be doing but it's easy to walk in another guy's shoes if you don't actually have to do it. All I know is it's pretty hard to get into trouble if you're busy with other stuff, and I'd say that's our situation here. Michael (Kranefuss) and Roger (Penske) expect certain things from me and from the guys on the team. Mobil 1 expects certain things from me and from the guys on the team. Winning is a big part of that, sure. But being a good representative of them is really important too, and that's what we all try to do. Jeremy Mayfield is entering his third season as the driver of the Mobil 1 Ford Taurus on the Winston Cup circuit. His diary appears weekly on CNNSI.com.
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