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The Pocono 499 For all but one mile, we had the car to beat
I was thinking about leading this off with what I told the crew when we cut the tire Sunday at Pocono. But I decided you probably don’t want to hear it. I’m sure you’ve heard by now, but if you haven’t, let me rehash the horrible details. The last part of Sunday’s 500-miler at Pocono, we were looking pretty good. We were leading the race and had a good enough lead we felt we were going to win the thing - as long as we didn’t have any problems. Remember that last part - "as long as we didn’t have any problems." Rusty Wallace, my teammate, was running second and Jeff Burton was right on Rusty’s tail in third. I wondered for awhile if they would be able to line up and catch me, and then make a move on the last lap. But we took the white flag with a good enough lead. All we had to do was run a good, smooth lap and we were going to win again at Pocono. Around Turn 2, I must have hit something. The right front cut down, Rusty and Jeff and it seemed like everybody else on earth, started passing me. We finished 10th but, by the time we took the checkered flag, I really didn’t care. We were pretty deflated. We had been the car to beat for 499 miles, and a beaten car because of some really bad luck for the last mile. In this sport, you take the good with the bad. The problem is the good never lasts long enough and the bad never goes away fast enough. You ask around this sport and you find out just about everybody has been living under a black cloud most of their careers anyway. I can kind of see that. No matter how many races you win, you’ve always lost more than you’ve won. Wins are precious and they are tough to come by for everybody. Losses are a dime a dozen. I’m not sure which fell quicker Sunday -- the tire or my heart. I’ve always heard when you are in that situation (leading late in the race), you start hearing strange noises and wondering what’s going to happen to you. All I was thinking was how fast Rusty (Wallace) and Jeff (Burton) were moving, if they had enough to catch me and what I would do if they did. I didn’t hear anything until the tire cut. I guess the next thing I heard was my heart falling. No, I didn’t think I was going to start crying but I wasn’t planning any parties either. It was pretty heart-breaking for all of us. These guys have worked so hard and we’ve been right on the verge of winning just about every race since the spring. I thought we were close at Michigan until Sunday - that was close. But we know that trophy didn’t say ‘Pocono 499' on it, and if somebody besides us took it home, I’m glad it was Rusty and those guys. The one thing I do feel really good about right now is knowing nobody on our team is hanging their head or anything like that. We know there was nothing anybody could do. Whatever happened happened, and there is nothing we can do about that. What we want to do is take a car to Indianapolis next week and run just as good, maybe with just a little bit better luck. Right now we’re figuring on taking this Pocono car and seeing what we can do with it at Indy. Some people figured we were crazy for coming back to Pocono with a different car than the one we won in in June, but I think we proved we did the exact right thing. We were really good in June but we were even better yesterday (Sunday). We had a good test at Indy and think we can run really good there too. We’ve been good there in the past, and it seems to be a track that kind of suits this Mobil 1 team. We’ve accepted the fact that what is done is done, there isn’t anything we can do about Pocono now and we need to move on down the road. The one thing that would make us really forget our luck at Pocono is winning at Indianapolis, so that’s our goal right now -- and I think it’s a pretty achievable one. There is plenty of racing left this season, and we’re looking at winning some more races. The Pocono deal didn’t pan out like we’d hoped but that doesn’t mean we can’t be just as strong at Indianapolis, or everywhere else on down the road. Just about everywhere we’ve gone the past few months we’ve been one of the cars to beat, and we’re going to keep working until we are the car to beat. Well, we won’t quit working then either. We’re in this to win and that’s what we’re going to keep working to do. We’ll probably have more setbacks and disappointments along the way and, even though the bad times always seem to last longer than the good ones, we’re going to do everything we can to make the good times as many as we can for this Mobil 1 bunch. Jeremy Mayfield is in his third season driving the Penske-Kranefess Mobil 1 Taurus on the Winston Cup circuit. His diary appears weekly on CNNSI.com.
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