Jeremy Mayfield isn’t done yet

Jeremy Mayfield, the former NASCAR star accused of using illegal substances before the 2009 Southern 500 at Darlington, isn’t done fighting his battle against NASCAR just yet.

He appeared on Speed Channel’s show NASCAR Race Hub this (Tuesday) evening. Mayfield told host Steve Byrnes that it could be another 12 to 18 months before his legal situation is over.

NASCAR fans are probably tired of hearing about Mayfield and his constant legal battles with the sanctioning body, but I’m one fan that isn’t.

Mayfield, in the foreground, driving the red No. 19, heads out for a practice run at Indianapolis in 2006

I’ve come out from the beginning and said I truly believed Mayfield wasn’t getting a fair shake.

In May of 2009, right after Mayfield was suspended from NASCAR, I wrote, “What happens from here will probably happen in a court of law, where one is supposed to be “innocent until proven guilty”. Tell that to NASCAR.”

Mayfield’s name re-appeared in May of the next year when a district court judge claimed the owner/driver couldn’t sue NASCAR because of contracts he signed with NASCAR before the start of the 2009 season.

U.S. District Court judge Graham Mullen noted in his ruling, “[Mayfield’s] argument assumes that NASCAR and Aegis were required to follow the [federal] guidelines. … They were not. This Court is not required to accept [Mayfield’s] unsupported and unreasonable interpretation of the guidelines.”

Mayfield claimed that NASCAR and Aegis Labs—NASCAR’s drug testing lab—contaminated his samples when they opened the “A” and “B” samples before sending them to an independent lab.

So, I opined—once again—that Mayfield was getting a bad end of this deal. “I’ve learned that according to the U.S. Constitution, we as citizens of this country have a right to a fair trial,” I wrote last May. “Did Mayfield get a fair shake? Was he guilty going into the trials because of the negative publicity he received prior to the trial?”

I continued with this, “We might never get a chance to find out whether or not Jeremy Mayfield was truly innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Or maybe it’s not over, and Mayfield will appeal the ruling? Then the year-long saga will continue. I’m sure this isn’t the end though.”

I guess it isn’t.

Byrnes and Mayfield weren’t able to get into some specifics due to the pending lawsuit. But Mayfield wanted to make sure everyone knows he’s not going to take it.

“It’s hard for me to come here today, because I fight this urge...I have lot of things want to say that I can’t,” he said. “I don’t want to get in any more trouble whatsoever about saying it.

“There’s a lot of anger now. There’s a lot of things that could come out that wouldn’t be good for either one of us.”

We’ll see where this leads. I still hold that Jeremy Mayfield is telling the truth (because since it has gotten this far, I might as well stick with my guns, right?) and NASCAR will be in hot water over how they handled his case.

Unfortunately it looks like we’ll have at least another a year before we find out who is right.