Jeremy Mayfield No. 66 Best Buy Haas CNC Racing Chevrolet Texas Motor Speedway Preview

Q&A WITH DRIVER JEREMY MAYFIELD:

After your first week with the team, how do you feel about how everything is going so far? “I’m really happy. I feel like I’m in a really good position with a team that’s on the rise. Obviously we’re disappointed with how we qualified and finished this past weekend, but Harold (Holly, crew chief) and I learned a lot about each other and how to speak each other’s language in terms of how the car is handling, so it was a great learning experience for the both of us.

“After we wrecked on Sunday, I spent a lot of time talking to Matt (Borland, Haas CNC Racing’s competition director) in the garage while the team was working on the car, talking with him about how the car was handling. He’s a really smart guy, and he was just absorbing everything I was telling him and gathering information to make the car better at Texas. There are really good people on the team, and Matt is really working hard to take everyone to the next level.

“As I said last week, we all know success is not going to come overnight, but we’ll just keep working and making gains on it and doing our best to get better every week, and we’ll get there. I have no doubt about that.”

Q&A WITH CREW CHIEF HAROLD HOLLY:

How did you feel about your first race with a new driver? “Well, it definitely wasn’t what we were looking for in terms of a good finish or even a good starting spot, but I was very pleased with how the team performed during the race. Our pit crew turned some of their fastest pit stops of the season. We had a couple of four-tire stops that were under 13 seconds and helped us gain some spots coming out of the pits, so I’m very proud of the job they did on pit road.

“As far as Jeremy, I’m enjoying getting to know him. We’re still just feeling out the situation, figuring out how he likes his cars to handle and getting on the same page, but he’s been great to deal with and I’m looking forward to the rest of the year and 2008. There’s no doubt the guy’s a talented driver. We just need to get a little more time together under our belts and I think we’ll see some really great things.”

JEREMY MAYFIELD’S HISTORY AT TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY: In 11 NEXTEL Cup Series starts at Texas Motor Speedway, driver Jeremy Mayfield has four finishes of 20th or better, including two top-10’s and one top-five. Both of Mayfield’s top-10 runs came while driving the No. 12 entry for team owner Michael Kranefuss. Mayfield’s best finish was a fifth-place run in the March, 1999, event, and his best starting position came one year earlier, when he started on the pole in the March, 1998, race at Texas.

HAAS CNC RACING’S HISTORY AT TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY: In eight Nextel Cup Series starts at Texas Motor Speedway, the Haas CNC Racing team scored its best starting spot in April, 2006, when Jeff Green qualified fourth. The team’s best finish at Texas came in this race one year ago, when Green finished 13th.