The circus is in town, housed in the multimillion-dollar big top sitting on a hill in Statesville, N.C. In it, the magic man is trying to make a young guy run like a vet and a vet relive the experience of his youth. All the while, he's trying to turn a trick for himself -- pulling a Winston Cup trophy out of his hat.

While Jeremy Mayfield, 33, likes to sleep in, play video games and race remote-control cars, his teammate Bill Elliott, 14 years his senior, is a private man who likes hanging out with his family in Georgia -- although he's known to make excursions to choice ski resorts and cut snow with his snowboard.

As different as their personalities seem, their careers are even more diverse. Elliott is a former champion who found success almost immediately after starting to race full time. He won almost 30 races by the time he was 33. Mayfield has three victories to his credit, and, say many in the garage, a heap of unfulfilled potential.

Still, somehow the magic man makes it all work -- to the tune of two victories, eight top-fives and 17 top-10s last year for Evernham Motorsports. Which makes wonder, what tricks does Ray Evernham have up his sleeve for 2003?

"We want to be at the front of the pack," the 45-year-old said.

Certainly, Elliott was responsible for most of the success in 2003, but Mayfield believes a strong finish in 2002 could translate into Elliott-like success for him this season.

To be clear, his "strong finish" is not evident in the stats sheet, where one cannot find a single top-10 finish in the final nine races. But the team was experiencing success behind the scenes, where time yielded smoother communication and a sharper focus on making the No. 19 Dodge a consistent contender.

	Ray Evernham, left, helped put Bill Elliott back in Victory Lane.

"We feel like we've made huge gains that haven't shown up as being huge yet, but we really feel like we're getting our consistency down and our communication worked out," Mayfield said. "They're starting to understand what I'm talking about on the car and I'm starting to understand how Ray and them do things. It's made a world of difference.

"I wouldn't say I was intimidated, but it took me a while to figure out how Ray likes things and how he does things. I feel like I went into this deal very conservative on my approach. Everything was new to me. I feel like now I'm as comfortable as I've ever been around anybody, and Ray has made me feel that way. I think we're going to go a long way together."

Not just Mayfield and Evernham, but Elliott, too. After all, no matter how different Mayfield and Elliott appear on the surface, they actually do have several similarities. None of which is greater than their desire to succeed. To that end, Elliott has been instrumental for Mayfield.

"I've got a great relationship with Bill," Mayfield said. "A lot of times after practice I'll stop by his truck and see how he's running, if they can do anything that can help us or we might be able to help them. The teammate situation is really working well with us. I know the only way you can say it's been working great is if we win every week. Bill had a great year. We had an up and down year. (But) the 9 and 19 are starting to run closer together every week."

While Mayfield tries to catch up to Elliott and blaze a new path in his career, Elliott is trying to backtrack over footsteps he laid more than a decade ago. After earning one championship, 32 victories and a bevy of nicknames in the '80s, Elliott had a rough time getting through the 1990s, mostly because he was struggling to balance racing and owning his own team.

In 2000, though, he agreed to a deal with Evernham that would change his fortunes. He insists he knew it would be a successful venture from the start, but the rest of us weren't clued in until the final race of that first year, when Elliott snapped a 227-race winless streak and won at Homestead, Fla.

Last year, he scored victories at Pocono, Pa., and Indianapolis. This year, he hopes to continue that increase in the wins column and maybe even hunt down a title.

"I feel like I'm the happiest now I've ever been," Elliott said. "I have been in pretty much a full circle. (The deal) has rejuvenated me quite a bit to be competitive each and every week."

Elliott said Evernham managed to put a dream team of sorts around him, a team which underwent some tweaking during this off-season and Elliott believes is even better. Mayfield said, watching from afar, that he thought that played a big role in Elliott's revival.

	“	I feel like I'm the happiest now I've ever been. I have been in pretty much a full circle. (The deal with Evernham) has rejuvenated me quite a bit to be competitive each and every week. ”
		— Bill Elliott

"Bill Elliott didn't all of a sudden learn to drive last year driving a Dodge," he said. "Ray and that race team and the 9 car has brought Bill Elliott back to life. He could drive the whole time everybody wrote him off, but now he's right back to where he needs to be. He's won Indy and Pocono and it's all about the team and the chemistry you have with the team."

Elliott understands that if he wants to win another title, it had better be soon. The urgency comes from a changing face he sees in the mirror -- more wrinkles and dulling hair which was once red but now brown -- and also from a desire to pay back Evernham for giving him one last push.

Evernham was a success as a crew chief, guiding the rise of Jeff Gordon. When he left Gordon to start his own team, there was a lot of doubters. When he struggled through that first year, the doubters felt vindicated. Now, it's evident that Evernham has once again worked his magic and put together two teams capable of turning heads. His best hopes for an owner's title come from Elliott, it appears for now, and Elliott intends on doing what he can.

"I'm not getting any younger," he said. "I look at it from the standpoint of how well I feel from year to year. I told Ray (that) this early into this deal I don't want to become a negative to this race team. I don't want a lack of what I'm not doing of whatever become a point that I'm the one holding them back. When that happens, I need to get on my own horse and go on down the road.

"This year I've worked hard trying to get in good shape, trying to keep the team going, trying to keep Ray in a better position week in and week out. I want to do what I can for him."

Rupen Fofaria is a beat writer for The Raleigh News & Observer and a regular contributor to ESPN.com.