Maybe now this Mayfield-NASCAR thing will cool off for a while

  
Jeff Gordon (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   INDIANAPOLIS
   So the Jeremy Mayfield case may be now on the backburner, for a while, until any new documents are filed in court, now that NASCAR won its appeal to the 4th circuit.
   It's been like watching a ping-pong game lately, NASCAR-this, Mayfield-that.
   And NASCAR drivers themselves?
   Well, here's Jeff Gordon on NASCAR's drug testing program:
    "I have been tested, I think, three times, and each time you can't help but have a little feeling inside of you going 'What is going to come out of this? I take an allergy pill -- is that going do something?'
    "You go through the year, and you get a cold, and you might have more than a cold and take an antibiotic.
    "Everything I've taken, or been prescribed, is on the list I have given to them.
     "If something new comes about, I give it to them.
     "I have been open with them. So I feel I am very well prepared to answer any questions that may arise.
      "I still think it is a good policy. It is new, so obviously there are going to be some things come out of that, that we are all going to learn from.
     "But I think it is a positive thing for the sport, that we need to be doing this type of testing.
     "Do we need a second outside lab to maybe test, to also to have a 'B' sample or something like that for a court case? Maybe.
     "But I still feel confident in what I am doing, and when I go in to get tested in what they are doing in their process.
     "I mean they are thorough. It is kind of scary thorough -- like you feel you are under investigation and you haven't even done anything.
      "They are very, very thorough. I'm glad. That is the way I want it to be done.
      "The only thing I have seen come out of this is that we have one lab that has the A and the B sample, and some of that has been in question.
      "So I just wonder, to alleviate some of those questions, if you had a sample that a qualified second lab could test.
      "But again I think the real story is going to come out in the long run. And when it does, I think we will have the answers…and we will find out really where our system really stands.
     "Right now, I stand by it, and the testing and the policies they have in place."
    

    That's good rubber the new Goodyears are working into the racing grooves at Indy (Photo: IMS)