Despite winning a temporary injunction yesterday allowing him back behind the wheel effective immediately, it appears that Jeremy Mayfield will not attempt to qualify for Saturday night’s Coke Zero 400. Mayfield said yesterday that he hoped to compete this weekend, but his attorney, Bill Diehl, told Sirius Speedway that preparing a car and getting it to Daytona in time for today’s opening round of practice would be “problematic.” NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston said Mayfield Motorsports has until 3 p.m. ET today to present a car for competition, and with less than two hours remaining, our sources at the speedway say he has not yet done so.
The hype surrounding Mayfield threatened to cross the line into outright silliness earlier today, when the Associated Press ran a breathless story announcing that team owners Larry Gunselman and Tommy Baldwin will not put Mayfield in their cars this weekend.
That really came as no surprise, since veteran Mike Wallace was already entered in Gunselman’s #64 Toyota, with Patrick Carpentier slated to steer Baldwin’s #36. Gunselman said that his sponsor wants no part of the controversy surrounding Mayfield, while Baldwin pointed out that he already had a driver for the weekend; Carpentier.
In a related (and equally vapid) story, Hendrick Motorsports, Roush-Fenway Racing and Joe Gibbs Racing all revealed today that they have no plans to replace any of their drivers with Mayfield, either.
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