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Not hanging my head Refusing to quit is important after tough losses
Posted: Tuesday June 13, 2000 02:16 PM
When I was a kid growing up, winning races was what I would always dream about. Kids don’t ever seem to think about standing on a stage in New York City holding a big trophy, but they think about Victory Lane at a race track. That was me then, and that’s pretty much me now. The championship is important, really important. That’s right at the top of our list of things we are working hard to win. But winning races, right now, is what is uppermost in our minds. Heading to a place like Pocono, where this team has won before and where we always run good, makes you feel pretty good about another one of those wins coming. You never forget your first win, but we were pretty much hoping it would be one of a blur of victory lane memories right now. That was a really big day for me, for Michael (Kranefuss, team owner), Roger (Penske, team owner) and all of the guys on this Mobil 1 team. We felt we were capable of winning, felt we had shown we were capable of winning and it was time to win. We’re getting those same feelings again now. We’ve shown we’re certainly capable of winning. When we pulled it together at California in the face of all that was going on right then and won that race, I think it showed a lot about this race team. The word “can’t” isn’t in our vocabulary. I saw a T-shirt at Michigan (Speedway last week) which said it all. It said, “Losers quit when they get tired. Winners quit when they win.” This Mobil 1 bunch is a bunch of winners. We showed what we had at Michigan, we just weren’t able to close the deal. I don’t think there is any doubt the Mobil 1 Taurus was the dominant car at that race track. Things didn’t end the way we had hoped but I think it was one more sign of what this team is capable of doing. We have better and better cars every week. Little things have snuck up and bit us, and little things have kept us from finishing where we probably deserved to finish, but we aren’t hanging our heads or quitting. We think things are going to start working for us, working the way we want them to. And when they do, we’re going to be awfully tough to stop. Maybe the championship is out of the question right now, even though it wouldn’t surprise me. But I know that nobody has ever finished in the top 10 (of the Winston Cup standings) without running all the races. The penalty was like losing a race (151 points is equal to a sixth-place finish). If we can come back from that and finish in the top 10 of the standings, then I think we can show how good this team is. We have some big plans. We will finish in the top 10 of the points. We will win more races. We will continue being a factor week in and week out. We’re building something pretty big here. It’s definitely time to win again. I had a lot of people tell me the first win was the hardest but I wonder about that. That second win was pretty tough too. As best I can tell, any of them are tough to win. And they should be. If it was easy, winning wouldn’t mean very much. This isn’t easy. Sometimes guys will make it look like it is but it’s definitely not easy. You have to work hard and you have to work hard all the time to get these things into victory lane. That’s why you hear so much about how “desire" is one of the most important components of winning race teams. To work as hard as you need to work and to do the things you need to do, that desire has to be there and it has to be incredibly strong. We’ve come a long way. We’ve had just over a year since Peter (Sospenzo) started as crew chief. And we’ve been using that time to put our stuff back together again, to work our way back to the top. It took awhile to turn things around last year but, maybe the last eight or 10 races of last season, we started seeing things turning around for the better. At first, it was just things we could see. Then it started being things other people could see. And we’ve had great runs almost every week this year. We’ve had little things go wrong that cost us but we’ve been a factor in all but maybe two races so far this season. We’re running up front. Now we have to finish up front. You have to finish consistently in the top 10 before you can finish consistently in the top five, and you have to do that before you’re winning consistently. We’re back to winning, now we’re looking on that deal of winning consistently. The really strong runs are starting to come consistently again. We’re on some pretty good tracks for me and for this team like Pocono and Daytona. One thing that would really give us a boost is sliding back towards the top in the points. Even with the points we don’t have anymore, we have to keep running just like we were running for the championship. Every single position is important in the points. You can’t ever give up no matter what the circumstances. If you’re struggling and running 30th then you have to do everything you can to finish 25th. If you’re running 10th then you have to do everything you can to finish fifth. If you’re fifth, you have to do everything you can to win. Every single point is important. I do know that everybody starts getting pretty selfish with points about this time in the season. There are a lot of people thinking points right now, and a lot of people are thinking points every single race. Some of them seem like they’re thinking points every single lap. I don’t sit in the car and try to calculate them, and Peter doesn’t stand in the pits figuring where we are, but we take a good hard look at them once that race is over. And we know that every single finishing position is vital. It’s true, if you win the race, the points take care of themselves. But you have to do everything you can to take care of them yourself. We’re pumped. We’re excited. We’re ready to really show people what this Mobil 1 team can do. There are some wins sitting out there waiting for us, and we’re not going to let anything stand in our way of getting them. We’re going to finish in the top 10 of the final points. We think this Mobil 1 team can do some pretty good things at Pocono. We’re pretty excited about getting back there. It’s been a good track for us, and we think it can be again. Pocono could be a great start to the rest of the season. Jeremy Mayfield is in his third season driving the Penske-Kranefess Mobil 1 Taurus on the Winston Cup circuit. His column appears weekly on CNNSI.com.
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