Mayfield Makes Points Gain With Bristol Finish

BRISTOL, Tenn. (March 17, 2008) – Jeremy Mayfield drove his No. 70 Haas Automation Chevrolet Impala to a 30th-place finish at Bristol Motor Speedway yesterday. Mayfield began the race in the 43rd position on the starting grid after his Haas CNC Racing team was forced to change engines on Saturday.

“We lost our engine early on in the first practice Saturday so we didn’t have much information to go on for the race,” Mayfield said. “The team worked very hard to get the engine swapped out so we could run a few laps before Happy Hour ended and we were ready to go with about 10 minutes left but that happened to be the time it started raining hard and practice was red flagged. It was a tough break,” he added.

Entering the day 34th in the owner points standings, and with guaranteed starting positions going only to the Top 35, the team knew that to preserve or improve its points position it had to run a clean race at a track not typically know for clean races.

“We knew we had to get out of here cleanly,” Mayfield said. “Certainly we wanted to do better than 30th but, considering our lack of practice and having to start from the back of the pack, we can at least feel okay about staying out of trouble and gaining some points. You hear people talk all the time about ‘big picture racing,’ and that’s what today was about for us.

“We gained a couple of positions but it’s still a thin margin,” he said. “We still have to step it up – have to get better.”

Mayfield’s 30th-place finish moved him up two spots in both the driver points and owner points standings to 32nd in each.

Following a weekend off the team will head to Martinsville Speedway for the March 30 running of the Goody’s Cool Orange 500. The race will be broadcast live on Fox and local MRN affiliates beginning at 2 p.m.