If there is one thing certain about motorsports, it is that caution flags are a major relief for drivers. In NASCAR, the caution flag is especially helpful for drivers who are one lap down, as it allows them to catch up to the leader. So, it is no wonder some drivers try their best to force results in their favor, and Jeremy Mayfield was no different.
The 56-year-old hasn’t been to the track since 2009, as he was banned from the sport for d–g use despite multiple warnings. But when he was racing regularly in the series, he was involved in a shady practice. And according to him, it is a method drivers might still be using to this day.
“When I got to the track, they said, ‘Buster needs to see you at the hauler,’” Mayfield revealed on the namesake podcast. “He said, ‘Hey, man. Come and sit down with me.’ So I went to sit beside him, and he goes, ‘You ran badly last week. You know, didn’t do very good. You said if it hadn’t been for the caution, you would have been a lap down, wouldn’t you?’ He said, ‘You know where I was watching the race at, don’t you? ’”
During one of his races, Mayfield was running a lap down when a caution flag suddenly came out for debris on the track, allowing him to close the gap to the leader. Believing the incident had gone unnoticed, Mayfield continued as normal, unaware that Buster had been carefully watching him the entire time.
Despite denying any involvement in shady tactics or race-altering maneuvers, Mayfield was eventually exposed. Buster later revealed the subtle trick Mayfield allegedly used to trigger caution flags and change the course of races.
“He said, ‘This looks familiar?’ and handed me a piece of roll bar padding about that big that had silver duct tape all over it,” he added. “It looked like a chunk of lead. I was like, ‘Yeah, it looks familiar,’ and I thought, ‘Well, I will just take my a– beating here and go be probably suspended and everything else, you know.’
“He just started laughing, and he said, ‘I saw you throw it the first time around, and it bounced all over your car, and you were trying to catch it. Next time you are trying to grab it and can’t find it. ’”
So what really happened during the race that got Mayfield the dreaded visit to the NASCAR hauler?
The cheeky debris on track trick
As it turns out, Mayfield kept a piece of debris in his car, and he tried to throw it out on the track to get the caution flag out. The first time he tried to do it, he mistimed it, and the debris struck the car’s roof, bouncing around. Mayfield was left desperate, trying to search for it. So he had to wait a lap. The next time he came around the same spot on the backstretch, he threw it out of the right-side window.
Had Buster not been in the stands paying close attention to the race, Mayfield’s actions may have gone completely unnoticed. Although he narrowly avoided suspension, the former driver appeared largely unfazed, later suggesting that the tactic was common in the garage and that he was far from the only driver bending the rules.
“That’s the way it was, and there was a lot of stuff that went on. I am sure it still goes on today, and back then, it was like, just about everybody had a caution under their seat somewhere. When you needed it, and you had to have it, you just do what you’ve got to do,” he added.
While Mayfield might be sure about such incidents happening today, they might not be as easy to conduct as they were earlier. With high-definition cameras and dash cams following the drivers’ actions, if they try to act on a whim and throw debris on the track, they will be easily caught.
Nevertheless, it goes on to say how NASCAR was always a sport about creating the maximum amount of variables and chaos to make things go your way back in the day.
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