CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Jeremy Mayfield has apologized for blaming his father's death on his estranged stepmother.
The public apology was part of a settlement Tuesday in a slander lawsuit Lisa Mayfield filed against the suspended NASCAR driver.
Mayfield still has a wrongful death lawsuit pending against his stepmother.
"I have previously made statements to the press in which I accused Lisa Mayfield of either murdering my father, Terry Mayfield, or being involved in a conspiracy to murder him," Mayfield said in a notarized statement.
"Those statements were made in the heat of my emotional state at the time. I now retract those statements and apologize to Lisa for having made them."
Terry Mayfield's Sept. 5, 2007, death was ruled a suicide in two separate investigations.
After Lisa Mayfield testified in a NASCAR affidavit that she had witnessed her stepson use methamphetamines, Jeremy Mayfield accused her in interviews of killing his father. He also said she testified on behalf of NASCAR only because he had cut her off financially following his father's death.
Mayfield has been suspended since May 2009 for failing a random drug test. He blamed the positive test for methamphetamines on a mix of prescription medication and over-the-counter allergy medication.
A judge ruled in NASCAR's favor in May. Mayfield immediately appealed, and the case is currently in the U.S. Court of Appeals.
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