Mayfield v. Evernham, and other thoughts

By DAVID GREEN

Scattered thoughts on the first Saturday after being on the sidelines while I geared up for back-to-school:

JEREMY MAYFIELD -- Guess it depends on whether you're a big fan of Jeremy's or not, but this fellow's work history raises a question or two. At what point does the evidence suggest that he's not an easy driver to work with, and his performance is not up to the point that it makes it worthwhile to put up with that?

There are multiple sides to every story, of course, and somebody pointed out in another Turn 3 blog that the Evernham team's ouster of Jeremy was not done with the usual platitudes. (To me, that's a good thing. The nice goodbyes are almost always a hypocritical attempt to mitigate bad publicity. Regardless of whose story is closest to truthful, thanks for the candor this time, guys.)

There was a time -- specifically, when he was driving for Penske and was chasing Jeff Gordon at the Brickyard 400 when a tire failure sent him into the wall in the South Chute -- that I thought Mayfield might be (a) The Next Big Thing, (b) the driver who would become Ford's Anti-Gordon, or (c) at least a really good racecar driver. I'm not so sure anymore -- that he's that good, or that his talents are in step with a high-maintenance personality.

SESSION QUALIFYING -- I had alluded in an earlier post about road racing that the Busch Series, once upon a time, experimented with European-style qualifying, putting multiple cars on the track at a time rather than the oval-track-standard solo efforts for one, two or more laps. Watching today's session qualifying from Watkins Glen, I think it's a no-brainer that this should be adopted for all NASCAR road-course events.

I'm not sure it wouldn't be a good thing for ovals, as well. Fans may have gotten used to watching guys (and girls, in deference to the Drive for Diversity) go out one at a time and take their best shot in an all-or-nothing run on the clock. But session qualifying could provide better entertainment and probably would take less time, depending on how it were structured.

APROPOS PUNISHMENT? -- Does anybody besides me find it curious that NASCAR decided to deny Stephen Leicht some practice time at Watkins Glen as an incentive to get the rookie to obey full-course yellow flags?

You have a new driver with limited experience overall and especially at this track, and you think it will help to hold him out of part of a practice session just to make a point with him?

How about sitting him down and giving him a good Roto-Rooter job on some part of his anatomy (y'all can use your imaginations)? How about slapping a fine on somebody who does not yet have a multimillion dollar salary and another couple of millions in endorsements and investments and assets such as condos in Daytona and a palatial estate on Lake Norman -- in other words, somebody to whom a financial punishment might actually mean something?

If I were to use NASCAR's philosophy, the next time one of my 10th-graders failed to pay attention to some teaching point, I would suspend him from the classroom to impress upon him the importance of paying attention -- thereby preventing him from having the opportunity to pay attention to my lecture, my audio-visual aids, and any interaction between students and teacher about the subjects of the time during which he was "thinking about the importance of paying attention."

No offense to NASCAR, but I'm not following your example, thank you very much. I'll continue to remove students from my classroom when their disruptive behavior warrants it, not to make points about other issues.

PROMOTIONAL CONSIDERATION -- Thanks to Larry for his props regarding my humble thoughts posted on Turn 3 (in a reply to Doug, on Keith's "Competition Cautions" piece of Aug. 7). I'll get that check in the mail to you right away, Larry. Twenty dollars, we agreed upon, and another $5 for every successive time you pay me a compliment -- right? ;D

Hmmm -- wonder if I could buy Mike Daly's kindness with $20? Nah... And, do I care what Mike Daly thinks or writes about me? Nah, again...

INDYCARS AT DAYTONA -- News that broke Thursday about the exploration of IRL IndyCar Series testing at Daytona International Speedway was much bigger than the media attention it received, in my opinion.

When Bill France opened the Daytona track, USAC's Champ Cars were featured in a couple of events, one of which resulted in the death of Marshall Teague Feb. 11, 1959. Teague, 36, a Daytona Beach native, was a star of the early days of NASCAR and scored two victories on the Daytona Beach and Road Course. He switched to USAC's forerunner, the American Automobile Association (AAA), so he could pursue a Champ Car career and race in the Indy 500. He ran the 500 twice, with a best finish of seventh in 1957. Teague was killed when his Sumar Special crashed during practice Feb. 11, 1959. He was the first driver fatality at the new track.

Less than two months later, on April 4, George Amick became the second driver to die at DIS when he was killed in a crash during a 100-mile USAC Champ Car event. That was the end of Champ Car racing at Daytona.

Much has changed in the open-wheel racing world since then. Today's IRL IndyCar Series machines put on great shows at high-banked oval tracks such as Michigan, California, Texas, Chicagoland, Kansas, Kentucky, and others. With the series' present limitations, it's unlikely they'd go much (if any) faster at Daytona than they travel at 2- or 1.5-mile tracks. Doesn't seem far-fetched to me to think either that the cars are not suited for Daytona or that they would not put on a great show there, just like at those other tracks.

Hey, if NASCAR is racing at Indy, it seems only right that Indy cars should have the opportunity to race at Daytona.

MAKING A PREEMPTIVE strike against the Mike Dalys of the blogging universe, I'll steal this end-of-rant disclaimer from Dennis Miller: "...But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." Y'all have a great weekend, y'hear?