NASCAR’S Comedy Central

From the What-If file:

(doing my Ken Squier impression) – Here at
the 1979 Daytona 500 Darrell Waltrip, in the Ranier Racing Oldsmobile, is on the
pole, flanked by David Pearson, in the Rod Osterlund Olds. Buddy Baker has the
Wood Brothers Mercury alongside Joe Millikan in the Petty Enterprises Dodge.
Behind them, Benny Parsons is slotted in the Roger Penske car alongside The
King, Richard Petty. Rookie Dale Earnhardt is in the second Osterlund car
alongside Harry Gant, another rookie, in the M.C. Anderson machine…….

(Squier again) – The 1984 Daytona 500: On
the pole is #28 Buddy Baker, the Ranier Racing, Waddell Wilson-prepared NAPA
Chevrolet, alongside Richard Petty, in the familiar #43 scheme now adorning the
Pontiacs of Bob Rahilly and Butch Mock. Darrell Waltrip, in Rod Osterlund’s car,
is slotted third, alongside the Ron Benfield #98 of Cale Yarborough. Dale
Earnhardt has DiGard racing’s #88 Gatorade car alongside David Pearson in the
familiar #11 of Junior Johnson……..

(now switching to Allen Bestwick) – Here
at the 2002 Daytona 500, Joe Nemechek, Front Row Joe, has the #15 NAPA Chevrolet
of DEI on the pole. Alongside is Jimmy Spencer, in the Target #01 Dodge of Chip
Ganassi. Ricky Rudd in the familiar #28 is in the second row beside Jeremy
Mayfield, looking to make his comeback even more pronounced in Travis Carter’s
#26. Mike Skinner has the Morgan-McClure #4 in fifth, and his old Craftsman
Truck adversary Ron Hornaday is alongside, a new team for Ron in the #45 and a
new engine program for Petty Enterprises. Skinner’s Morgan-McClure teammate
Bobby Hamilton Jr., now carrying the number 14, brings Dr. Pepper sponsorship to
Winston Cup alongside Jimmy Spencer, flying the colors of Hills Brothers Coffee
on Andy Petree’s #33…….

---

Such are two scenarios as could have
played out in the past and a scenario that may play out next February. That is
how hilarious the NASCAR Comedy Central – aka Silly Season – can and has become.

The biggest domino of the present hilarity
is Jeremy Mayfield. His tenure at Penske Racing came to an abrupt end after the
Kansas 400 – whether he quit or was fired is in some dispute. Regardless, such
is the end of a troubled tenure.

Mayfield’s Winston Cup debut came in 1993
as he was running the ARCA series and gained enough top fives to win that
series’ top rookie award. In July 1994 his first big break came when Cale
Yarborough hired him for his #98 Fords. The team’s resources were not as lavish
as the biggest outfits, but the talent was there in Mayfield, crew chief Tony
Furr, and engine builder Tony Santanacola. Mayfield showed respectable efforts
during the 1995 season, most notably the rain-delayed Volunteer 500 at Bristol
where he led impressively but was swept into a big crash.

1996 opened with the promise of even
better. Testing the fastest for Daytona, Mayfield stuck Cale’s Ford into the
lead of the Daytona 500 and was still in contention when he got smacked to the
wall in the western short chute with 20 to go. Mayfield followed with a
spectacular effort at the Atlanta 500. The team’s lack of resources compared to
the big empires showed in a lack of consistent strength, but the effort was
still there. Mayfield won the pole for the Diehard 500 and also ran the
companion Grand National 300, battling for the lead all day and making some
nervy passes late in the going.

But the effort was not rewarding enough,
and after the Southern 500 Cale and team owner Michael Kranefuss pulled a direct
trade – John Andretti slotted into Cale’s Ford and Mayfield took over Kranefuss’
#37. The new pairing began to produce in 1997 with top fives at Dover and Pocono
and elsewhere, but still there wasn’t enough to clear the hurdle of victories.

That hurdle was cleared when Kranefuss
merged his team with Penske Racing for 1998. The tandem and other Ford teams got
a golden opportunity when NASCAR in effect waived the normal November-December
test ban at the end of 1997, and thus allowed Ford teams to test the
hurriedly-assembled Taurus racecar while GM teams were padlocked. This testing
paid off for Mayfield at Daytona with a solid third-place finish, and suddenly
Jeremy was a threat to win week after week and he won the pole at Texas in
April. The first win finally came at the Pocono 500 in June, but after that the
finishes curiously deteriorated – among the more bitter losses was at the
Brickyard 400; Mayfield had clawed his way to second early on when the right
front tire sent him into the wall in the south-end short chute. He nonetheless
held on to finish seventh in 1998 points.

1999 proved no better and Mayfield failed
to win. This came despite excellent efforts at several races, most notably the
Daytona 500 where he drafted with Rusty Wallace all day but cut a tire at the
finish. As Mayfield’s consistency began to deteriorate his stature within the
team began to become an issue. Kranefuss had already sold his effort in the team
to Penske and disputes between Rusty and Jeremy over chassis setups became open
news. Mayfield ended 1999 eleventh in points.

2000 was the year of Tarawa’s dodging tide
for Mayfield. The season opened with a return to consistent finishes, then at
the Diehard 500 he won the pole, but after finishing 14th NASCAR confiscated the
car to check its fuel, and it came out that an additive had been used. At the
California 500 Mayfield stayed on the track late and sweated out the challenge
of faster cars to take the win, but then came heavy fines, first for the
Talladega fuel additive, then for the Fontana car measuring too low in post race,
and crew chief Peter Sospenzo became Peter Suspended for several races.

The Michigan 400 foretold the season –
Mayfield had the entire field crushed, but his engine went up in smoke. The next
week was the Pocono 500, and in the final laps Dale Earnhardt stayed on the
track with Mayfield second. It appeared Earnhardt would win, but in the final
corner Mayfield ran him down, punted him ever so gingerly out of the groove, and
stole a rip-roaring win.

Then the freefall began with another DNF
at Daytona. On the return to Pocono Mayfield had the lead, with Rusty Wallace in
second having conceded the race to him – "When you get behind cars, this
aero-push they keep talking about is just monumental, you can’t pass
anymore," he confessed afterward. But in the Tunnel Turn of the final lap
Mayfield’s tire shredded and Rusty had the win.

Next week Mayfield socked the Turn Three
wall at Indianapolis and had to sit out two races. He returned at Michigan and
finished 13th, but after that the freefall hit high gear – at the Southern 500
he led the most laps and blew up. Soon he was blowing engines every week, and it
became something of a running joke. At Charlotte the engine held together and
Jeremy finished second, then the failures resumed the next two races, back to
back seconds followed at Phoenix and Homestead, and then the season ended at the
Dixie 500 with the now-expected trail of thick white smoke.

For 2001 the engines held together better,
but the competitiveness was also largely gone despite five top five finishes.
Rumors that Mayfield would quit the team became more pronounced, and Mayfield
himself started hinting in interviews that he wanted out.

The explosion finally came at Kansas. The
team used a three-year-old short track car, wholly inappropriate for the Kansas
track, and Mayfield’s disgust was evident in every interview. Thus ended his
tenure with the team.

Where he will go for 2002 is as yet
unknown – a good choice would be Travis Carter’s #26, a competitive car with a
sponsor (Kmart) with whom Mayfield once worked.

The #26 ride became open when Jimmy
Spencer admitted he will not return to Travis Carter’s outfit after seven
seasons. This was a team that usually showed the moxie to win but could never
seem to pull it off. The 1999 and 2000 seasons were the outfit’s nadir, wasting
as they did two years babysitting Darrell Waltrip and his inflated sense of self
as a race driver; it is telling that once Waltrip was gone from the Carter #66,
the overall team’s competitiveness picked up as they phased out Waltrip’s setups
and substituted setups that work.

Speaking of Waltrips, rumor has leaked out
that Michael Waltrip is on the way out of Earnhardt Inc. If so, then Michael
Waltrip is finished as a Winston Cup driver. The #15 won the Daytona 500 on
Junior’s team-order not to pass Mikey at the finish and on Senior’s ill-fated
decision not to race them but to try and block off the faster Sterling
Marlin-Bill Elliott-Wallace brothers-Bobby Hamilton phalanx. Mikey finished
second in the Firecracker 400 and made no effort to pass Junior for the win, a
damning indictment of modern racing. Everywhere else Mikey didn’t even go
through the motions of being competitive.

If Mikey is axed, a good choice would be
Joe Nemechek, supposedly on the way out of Andy Petree’s team with Oakwood Homes
quitting as sponsor. Front Row Joe can bring driving ability, qualifying
ability, and racecar knowledge to the DEI outfit and mesh better with Junior and
Steve Park than Mikey did. He tends to get along with crews well and knows the
little nuances of Chevrolets from having driven them forever.

Rumored driver changes abound right now.
Even Ward Burton and John Andretti, despite little in the way of believable
context, are rumored to be changing rides. Andretti’s Petty Enterprises team is
getting a new engine builder in Mike Ege, who has purchased Robert Yates’
customer engine business and will supply the Petty Dodges with their power plants
while Yates’ primary engine shop handles Ford customer engines.

One deal that is already done is Mike
Skinner with Morgan-McClure, and another rumor is that he will get a teammate in
Bobby Hamilton, Jr. in 2002, a move that comes five years late for the McClures,
who’d toyed with the idea of forming a second team beginning in 1996 but who
kept putting it off for one reason or another and have unquestionably paid for
it.

So the rumor page is on full speed, and
right now it seems anything is possible.