Testing draws a
red flag
By MIKE LOPRESTI Gannett News Service
Jeremy Mayfield? Never met the fellow. He’s a race driver, and there will be no claims from here on any special NASCAR expertise. That’s the place where Tony Stewart’s temper sometimes could fry an egg, correct?
But you don’t need to be able to tell Darlington from Talladega to understand one thing about NASCAR: There’s an oil leak at the moment in the drug-testing program, and someone had better fix it.
Still upset that too many cleanup hitters were juiced, and baseball didn’t do enough to stop it? Wait till you get a load of this.
You may have noticed that Mayfield has beaten the rap – temporarily, anyway – on a failed test result and ensuing suspension. We’re not talking an overdose of cold medicine. This concerned methamphetamines, a charge he denies.
NASCAR said he was out.
A judge, citing a few possible loose wires in the testing process, ordered him back in.
NASCAR wants him back out, because losing this case would make its drug program as credible as an infomercial for steak knives.
Mayfield might be trying to manipulate the system, or an innocent man wronged. Presumably, the lawyers will sort it all out sometime this century. And not that NASCAR doesn’t have enough headaches already, trying to deal with rising costs, shrinking attendance and waning ratings. These are not heady days for auto racing, from Formula I to Indianapolis to Daytona.
But recessionary woes or not, shouldn’t a drug testing program in auto racing be a little more, uh, stable – as the image of a methhead roaring into the turn at 200 miles an hour flashes through our minds?
That idea popped up anew while reading an Associated Press account of this past Monday’s testing of Mayfield. It was either a story about NASCAR’s efforts to get one man to fill a bottle – or a long-lost script from the Keystone Cops.
And so ended another episode of the desperate test takers.
are due back today.
