Back in February, veteran NASCAR driver Jeremy Mayfield invited me into the office of his hauler at the Sprint Cup race at Fontana. We talked for a half-hour or so. He seemed informed, ambitious, confident. He seemed in control of himself and his race team. His English was a bit fractured and backwoodsy, but that didn’t exactly make him unique on the circuit. And, anyway, he comes from Kentucky. If anything, his good ol’ boy patois made him seem more genuine and even a bit old school.

I was doing a story for the New York Times about start-up teams that were hoping to break through in a year of financial cutbacks throughout the sport. It was a semi warm-and-fuzzy premise about plucky drivers and owners, and entrepreneurial spirit, and at the time NASCAR seemed to be rooting for teams like Mayfield’s. The NYT story I did quoted Brian France, NASCAR’s head man, as saying it would be a “wonderful story” if one of the privateers broke through this season.

France didn’t mention anyone by name, but he had to be thinking of Jeremy Mayfield. Mayfield and his team were a focal point in the story because his team seemed to have more money and sophistication than the average 2009 start-up team. He had some sponsors, and he seemed to know what he was doing, and his team looked and acted like a big-time team.

And now, of course, we have Jeremy Mayfield as the Sprint Cup’s Devil Incarnate, alleged two-time loser in a test for methamphetamine, a guy NASCAR seems intent on drumming out of the sport immediately, if not sooner.

What to make of this?

1. If NASCAR decides to destroy a driver, a team … it most certainly can. This is an organization run by a handful of people, most of them blood relations. There is no due process, no transparent legal proceedings. If I understand it correctly, drivers didn’t even know what drugs were considered impermissible. It is rather alarming, actually, how much power the organization wields over everyone associated with it. You can get along and try to get your spot at the cash trough, or you can cause waves and be made invisible. And now it has turned its wrath fully on Jeremy Mayfield and, well, it’s not hard to figure out how this is going to turn out, in terms of Mayfield’s racing career.

2. Jeremy Mayfield may be a squirrelly dude. He may be a drug-abusing one. NASCAR certainly says so, and presumably believes so. To be sure, there are some weirdnesses in his career history. More than other drivers? Maybe. Maybe not. But the very public 2006 breakup with Ray Evernham smacks of self-destruction, as does his refusal to take his punishment quietly after (allegedly) failing his first drug test (which NASCAR at first did not identify as meth) and, instead, turning to the attack in a July 9 espn.com story. An attack almost unprecedented in NASCAR history — and one that preceded by six days NASCAR’s announcement that he had failed a second test for meth and presenting an affidavit from Mayfield’s stepmother in which she claims to have seen Mayfield using meth numerous times, including at the track.

Now, it’s getting ever uglier. As if that were possible. Mayfield attacked the stepmother today, accusing her of murdering his father, of taking money from NASCAR to testify against him, and comparing Brian France to Al Capone.

What makes this all fascinating, in a train-wreck sort of way, is the level of vitriol and what sort of behind-the-scenes NASCAR machinations may become revealed by legal proceedings.

Never before has NASCAR seemed so determined to run out of its sport a guy with a semi-decent resume. Mayfield has five career victories. He qualified for the first Chase for the Cup. He drove for a prominent team. And now NASCAR is accusing him of twice failing tests for the tackiest drug in the whole sordid world of recreational drug use — meth. There is no drug that NASCAR could come up with that would be more damaging to his reputation than meth, the drug of choice for lowlifes and the lowborn, and the sort of scourge to the rural South that crack cocaine was to the inner city.

And never before has a driver of Mayfield’s prominence fought back the way he has. He is stepping up and going chin-to-chin with Brian France and NASCAR (which clearly has infuriated the organization even more). Why? Because he says he is innocent. And because he has nothing left to lose in the world of NASCAR. He will never be able to get a sponsor for his team or even a ride for another team. Because he didn’t just fail a drug test. He failed a meth test.

This will be the great off-the-track story in NASCAR for a long time. Maybe years to come, as it works its way through the legal system.

So far, it seems as if most drivers have dutifully backed the NASCAR position. There have been calls for Mayfield’s exclusion, even after he got a restraining order allowing him back on the track. Those calls are sure to increase now. Not that it matters, since Mayfield couldn’t get a ride now if he had $1 million in his pocket to offer the lowliest team owner.

In the process, NASCAR’s seemingly arbitrary and capricious drug-testing policy (which it seems to be trying to legitimize and professionalize even as we speak) will undergo a level of scrutiny that it may be hard-pressed to withstand. And Mayfield’s life will be dissected and all his foibles revealed. (Though it’s hard to imagine what might come to light that is more damaging than failed meth tests.)

Meanwhile, Mayfield will serve as a sort of cautionary tale to any other driver who ever contemplated taking on NASCAR — beyond venting right after a race. (Which the guys are generally allowed to do, especially if they issue an apology a couple of days later.)

You take on NASCAR at your peril. Jeremy Mayfield, a druggie, perhaps, has taken on NASCAR.

There will be no winners here. Only losers.

Mayfield already has lost his career. All he can try to do is clear his name, and while doing that it seems clear he means to take NASCAR down a peg or 10.

It now seems incumbent on the organization to cut back on what appears to be personal and vindictive behavior and try to turn this into a dry and routine matter of testing and extra-legal jurisprudence. NASCAR’s ruling clique needs to check its own anger first. Because if it doesn’t stop acting with more emotion than intelligence, this enthusiasm for crushing Jeremy Mayfield could end up illuminating some of the dark corners of the NASCAR world that the organization certainly must know would be better left unseen.

A former insider of Jeremy Mayfield’s standing probably knows enough about several extraordinarily delicate NASCAR topics for those revelations to prove extremely damaging to the sport. The organization’s leadership ought to understand that and act to tamp down this whole story — rather than continuing to fan the flames of it.