Mayfield waiting for Evernham call

Despite making the Chase for the past two seasons, Evernham dropped Mayfield from the team after Indianapolis, when the car fell out of the top 35 in the standings for the first time this year, therefore not guaranteeing the car a spot in every race.

Elliott Sadler has now been hired to replace Mayfield, and did well in his first outing at Michigan last weekend, scoring a top ten finish.

Cracks in the relationship between Mayfield and Evernham first became apparent at Chicagoland last month, when Mayfield criticised his team boss for not attending races and putting his focus elsewhere.

"I really don't know [how it went wrong so quickly]," Mayfield told US TV station Speed Channel. "I wish I could tell you that. Things had really gone good the last couple of years for us, but it seemed like at the end of last year things were evolving, I guess you could say.

"It just didn't seem like the relationship he and I had, for sure, just wasn't as close as it had been in the past. All of these things just kept getting further and further apart.

"We both agreed on finishing this year out. But then when I heard Elliott Sadler was out of his car and could be released, that's when things really started picking up. All he [Evernham] had to do was come to me and say, 'look, we've explored options and you've explored yours, we have something different going on for 2007'.

"I did and he did too. All he could have said was, 'let's just don't finish the year out, and let's come to some type of agreement and we'll be fine' - and that's what we had to do - or could have done, and been a lot better off.

"I've been waiting on my friend to call me, and I'm still waiting. And he never calls. I felt he owed me a phone call anyway, to at least let me know what I did wrong. If your going to fire somebody, or get rid of somebody or terminate their contract - that's pretty big. So, I would actually like to know what went wrong.

"We're fine. We're going to get over it. I'm going to move forward. He's going to move forward. If you put all of that behind you, I'm sure friendships can be fixed and that the phone call will certainly help.

"I just want to hear it from him. I think that would be the little ending to the story here."