False testimony? Guarantee on Indy; a preventable death?

Lots going on in the NASCAR world today from more in the Jeremy Mayfield case to Jeff Gordon guaranteeing fans that this year's Brickyard 400 at Indy won't be saddled with tire problems to questions Jimmie Johnson has about a track where a NASCAR Mexico driver was killed over the weekend.

We'll start with the Jeremy Mayfield case. NASCAR has filed papers in federal court accusing Mayfield's side of presenting "false testimony to the Superior Court.''

At issue is Mayfield's expert witness, Harvey MacFenerstein, president of Analytical Toxicology Corp., a drug-testing company in San Antonio, Texas.

When the case was in a North Carolina court (it has since been moved to federal court), Mayfield's side sought a temporary restraining order to allow him to compete at Dover. Mayfield's side presented evidence by MacFenerstein. His contention was that federal guidelines were not followed by the lab NASCAR contracted to do the drug testing in regards to Mayfield's B Sample. (Mayfield's urine sample from his Richmond drug test was divided into two samples, A and B. the A was tested first and the B was later tested to verify that Mayfield had tested positive before NASCAR indefinitely suspended him for violating the Substance Abuse Policy.

Now, NASCAR is questioning MacFenerstein's credentials. Obviously, if you poke enough holes in a person's credentials and that's your expert witness, it weakens what they have to say and could impact Mayfield's argument.

NASCAR wants the portions of Mayfield's complaint based upon MacFenerstein's affidavit dismissed.

# NASCAR claims in court documents that MacFenerstein did not graduate or receive a degree of any kind from Midwestern State University of Texas as MacFenerstein stated he did in court documents, stating he got his Bachelor of Science degree in medical technology there in 1975.

# NASCAR claims that CETED University has no record of MacFenerstein ever being a former or current student. MacFenerstein claimed he received his medical doctor degree in Clinical Pathology from CETED in 1982.

# NASCAR claims that MacFenerstein is not a member of American Association (for) Clinical Chemistry as MacFenerstein stated in his addidavit.

# NASCAR claims two groups that certify Medical Review Officers have no records of of his certification.

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Goodyear and Indy

I'm sure you all remember last year's Brickyard 400 where NASCAR was calling competition cautions about every 10-12 laps to keep tires from blowing out in what was a horrible day for fans and for the sport.

Goodyear is completing its 7th test session at the track today since that race. There are a dozen cars testing. So, what's the latest?

When Goodyear's Greg Stucker was asked if he could guarantee that fans would not see a repeat of what happened last year, Jeff Gordon immediately chimed in:

"I can. I will gurantee it. I'm 100 percent confident. I ran this tire as hard as I possibly could, put numerous laps on them. It's a dead issue. There's going to be a race here. It might come down to fuel mileage, it might come down to a lot of different factors, fastest car, not the fastest car, track position, a doulbe-file restart with 10 to go, but it's not going to come down to a 10-lap shootout on whose tires can last. They've actually made (the tire) too good. It's that good, and I'm 100 percent confident. I can promise all the fans out there that if they want to come to the Brickyard and see a great race and be confident that the tires are not going to be an issue, trust me. I hope that's enough for them. They've got it resolved, for sure.

Said Stucker: "What he said.''

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You might have missed this over the weekend but Carlos Pardo was killed in a NASCAR Mexico race over the weekend. Here's the video but be warned, the accident is savage.

I asked Jimmie Johnson if he had seen the video and what he thought about it. In a way, it reminded me of Jeff Gordon's big crash at Las Vegas last year when he hit the inside concrete retaining wall. Vegas has since put a SAFER barrier up. Pardo's car was tapped as he went to block a move to pass him low for the lead. They made contact, Pardo slid sideways and quickly hit a concrete barrier on the inside of the track on the passenger side. All the bodywork of the car flew off, leaving only the mangled chassis.

Here's what Johnson said about seeing the video and his thoughts about track safety issues;

"In that instant and that track and the types of walls that they had there were so many things wrong in that situation, I wouldn’t even drive a race car on that track,'' Johnson said.  "Those moveable concrete walls that were there. If you just hit it in a straight line, one of those sections is going to move and now you’re going to hit the blunt end of another section. I cannot believe that was the retaining wall on the inside of that race track. Yes, we still need to look at these angles and how a car can get into situations. The chances of Jeff’s car doing what it did were very, very low but it did and we need to fix that. Yeah, they put a soft wall on it, but we just need to continually look forward and make small changes. I think the big stuff is off the table on a lot of our race tracks. I still feel that Pocono is probably one of the tracks that has the biggest gaps. All the grass on the inside of the track. The Armco barriers. We saw Steve Park flip down the straightaway one time. There’s some stuff there that can be improved. I’d say the majority of the tracks, it’s just small things and it’s hard for them to think about the money that goes into it, but we still need to keep moving forward and keep improving those race tracks.’’

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