Mayfield out to prove he’s innocent until proven guilty

Even though Jeremy Mayfield wasn’t in the garage this morning, and it looks highly unlikely that he’ll be driving on Saturday evening, he won a huge battle yesterday in a North Carolina court.

Mayfield was issued a temporary injunction to get back to racing as early as this weekend at Daytona. The quote heard round the NASCAR world from Mayfield: “This is huge for us,” he said. “This means more to me probably than any race I’ve ever won or anything.”

I guess I should admit that I’ve been secretly pulling for Jeremy Mayfield all this time. I think he’s gotten the raw end of this deal with the meth. Maybe I’m just gullible and I want to believe that every word he says is true. Well, yesterday, according to Mayfield, “The truth came out.”

Mayfield and his wife, Shana, stand outside the courtroom yesterday. Mayfield is one happy guy after a judge told him he can go back racing.

Most everyone in the sports world heard about the first ever NASCAR driver to fail a drug test, and heard even more when NASCAR’s independent lab, Aegis Labs, said Mayfield was on meth. Mayfield has vehemently denied using the highly addictive drug and has claimed the false positive came from using a prescription of Adderall and Claritin-D for allergies.

And, I believe him.

I have probably put my neck a little bit too far out on the line here in defending Jeremy, but what do I have to lose? After all, NASCAR can test me and find out that I too take prescriptions for my allergies, but that’s all they’ll find. They can even cut my hair if they want to. Mayfield says he’s fine with NASCAR testing him more often than a heart attack patient has cholesterol screenings.

Mayfield is thinking, "Here take a fresh batch of my hair right now... I've got nothing to hide"

“If they want [my hair], I cut it about once a week so we can do that. Whatever we’ve got to do,” he said. And, he’s right. He now faces an uphill battle (cue the Miley Cyrus music) against a group who has proven that money is no big deal to them. In reading some of the comments on a Yahoo! Blog post by Jay Busbee yesterday, I realized that Mayfield faced an even more precarious situation than I had first considered.

Brian France, NASCAR CEO, gives a funny grin as he walks out of the court hearings yesterday. I'm wondering what he thought was so funny?

One user stated, “If they want him out (and they do now) they just have to out spend him. You can’t run a race team and fight court battle at the same time, not with NASCAR!” In my area of town, the former owners of Kentucky Speedway are facing a similar situation, and they keep losing.

Maybe Mayfield can come back and field his race team once again. Mayfield stated, “Now we’ve cleared the air. Hopefully everybody will think different of me now.” Maybe his name will be cleared, but to some he’ll still be the guy who first tested positive in NASCAR. Unfortunately that’s all we’ll remember about Mayfield until NASCAR writes him a huge check for defamation.

Then of course, he might be able to be competitive in NASCAR once again.

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Tomorrow I’ll look forward to the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona and we’ll get back to the countdown for the Brickyard 400 on Monday. Until then, remember that there are only 24 days until someone (preferably Mark Martin) gets to kiss the bricks!