No. 19 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger Race Facts
NASCAR Nextel Cup Series --- Texas Motor Speedway
Driver: Jeremy Mayfield
Team Director: Kenny Francis
Crew Chief: Slugger Labbe
Team Owner: Ray Evernham
Chassis: No. 53
Car Info: Tested at Kentucky
JEREMY MAYFIELD QUOTES:
“We’re pumped up about going to Texas. We’ve learned a lot since our last race at an aero track. We have a good handle on what’s going on, and we feel like Texas could be a breakthrough track for us.
“At the start of the year we weren’t really where we needed to be, but it wasn’t because of a lack of hard work. We just went in a direction that we thought was right and had to back up on that a little bit. That’s the good thing about it, we were smart enough to do that quick enough and still have a long way to go in the season. It shows we have a good race team…good smart people working on this team.
“Coming out of Martinsville running like we did and the fact that we keep getting better and better each week, I’m pumped up. This part of the season definitely has our kind of tracks, so things should be good for us.”
SLUGGER LABBE QUOTES:
“In the last month, we’ve built three new cars. In the last two weeks, we’ve tested at Phoenix, Caraway and Kentucky twice. We’ve used the guys up quite a bit because our performance wasn’t where it needed to be, and we started testing hard. We’ve learned a lot in the last two or three weeks. We’ve built some better race cars, better aero-balanced race cars. When we get to Texas, I really think it will show.”
STATS & FACTS
JEREMY MAYFIELD AT TEXAS
This weekend marks Mayfield’s ninth career visit to Texas Motor Speedway. He has one pole, one top five, two top 10s and has led three races for a total of 125 laps at the track. Mayfield’s first start at the track came in April of 1997, when he started 20th and finished 32nd.
MAYFIELD’S TEXAS BESTS
Mayfield earned the very first Winston Cup pole position at Texas Motor Speedway in April of 1998. (Qualifying was rained out for the first Cup Series race at Texas in 1997, and no Bud Pole was awarded.) Mayfield earned his best finish at the track in 1998 when he started 27th and finished fifth.
MOVING UP
With Mayfield’s 15th place finish last weekend at Martinsville he moved up one spot in the points standings to 17th, one spot ahead of his Evernham Motorsports teammate Kasey Kahne, just nine points out of 15th and 87 points out of 10th.
MAYFIELD PLEASED WITH TEXAS CHASSIS
After testing at Kentucky Speedway in March, Mayfield’s No.19 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger team improved upon breakthrough aerodynamic changes originally discovered in the Atlanta race. Mayfield was pleased to announce, "We said we were going to test our butts off at Kentucky and really figure it out. We hit on something that's going to be huge for us the rest of the year. It will get the aero balance back where it needs to be. This is definitely going to be the turning point of our season.”
This weekend at Texas, Mayfield will race the same chassis No. 53 that the team tested at Kentucky.
RACE RECAP – MARTINSVILLE
Mayfield started Sunday’s race in the third spot and was one of the dominant cars during the first half of the race in his No. 19 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger. He led 68 laps until a cut right-front tire caused him to make an unscheduled green-flag pit stop. Mayfield went three laps down during the pit stop, robbing him of a top-five finish. However he managed to make up two of the lost laps and charge to a 15 place finish.
