Does Evernham Need To Start Questioning Mayfield?

NASCAR's Talladega weekend began amid several bouts of bad news such as the need to hastily haul out backup cars to fill out the BGN field and the hostile local reaction to the proposed NYC Speedway.

One overlooked story, though, concerns Jeremy Mayfield. He has won five NASCAR races, but in 2006 he has been all but irrelevent. Needless to say, he's worried about it, and apparantly is waiting for Ray Evernham to step in. "Ray's on top of everything that goes on, and yet we're this far into the season and I don't see the urgency right now for some reason of why we're running bad."

Evernham for his part has said he has talked to Mayfield about the dismal performance of his #19 Dodge, this while Kasey Kahne's #9 has won twice with the end of April and #10 Scott Riggs, though it has not shown much muscle either, has nonetheless climbed a ladder after failing to make the Daytona 500.

That Mayfield is struggling in the #19 is pretty old hat by now. Jeremy Mayfield's career has been a bizarre mix of great potential and uninspiring performance. Being hired by Cale Yarborough's team in mid-1994, Mayfield ran well at times, winning a pole at Talladega, before jumping into Michael Kranefuss' Ford in September 1996. Mayfield begfan to improve in his finishes, and when Kranefuss merged his team into Roger Penske's team in 1998 Mayfield broke through with victory at Pocono.

But after that his 1998 season collapsed. He didn't win in 1999 despite several good races, then in 2000 he won at Fontana, this after his Talladega pole run in April of that year resulting in a cheating scandal. He won again at Pocono, punting Dale Earnhardt aside on the final lap, and delightfully skewered Earnhardt's bald-faced lie from Bristol the previous August - "I was just trying to rattle his cage."

But 2000 was an epidemic of blown engines for Mayfield, and in 2001 his relationship with the Penske team soured and then blew up at Kansas when he called out the team for bringing the wrong chassis to the track.

Mayfield joined Evernham for 2002, and for the most part struggled. Just as everything looked lost, Mayfield finished second at Dover in 2003, and began a strong run of finishes. When he won at Richmond in 2004, he made NASCAR's inaugural playoff format, but once there never went anywhere. He nailed a fuel-mileage win at Michigan in 2005 and made the playoffs again, and again went nowhere.

Mayfield has been the one constant on a team that has seen several changes in crew chiefs, pit personnel, engineers - for all practical purposes Evernham has turned the team upside down trying to get consistent performance out of Mayfield.

Eventually, one has to begin questioning Jeremy Mayfield on that team. Evernham has seen what is working with Kasey Kahne - can Mayfield adapt his driving style to what works for Kahne? Perhaps Evernham should press Mayfield on matters in that regard.