November 4, 2007
By Kim Roberson

Kim Roberson

What an amazing year it has turned out to be for David Reutimann.

The driver, who has pulled double duty for Michael Waltrip Racing (MWR) all season between the Busch Series (No. 99) and Cup series (No. 00), has been the best thing about that entire racing shop. This week he qualified for his 25th Cup Series race, two more races than his teammate, Dale Jarrett, and 10 more times than his boss, Michael Waltrip. He has made every race on time, having begun the year with not only a rookie stripe on his bumper, but a big goose egg in the point’s column.

Reutimann had a rough start, crashing out of the first two races of the year, and facing five engine failures in the next 13 races that he ran. He missed three of the first 10 races by not qualifying, making a race one week, then missing the next, qualifying the next week, and then missing the next. Hardly a way to build momentum in your first year of Cup racing, but Reutimann hasn’t let it get him down.

There is no doubt that David is passionate about his racing. It is no secret that he gets so nervous about making a race on qualifying day, he has been known to get physically ill. When he misses a race, he isn’t just disappointed for himself; he feels it for the entire team…the entire organization.

“When you want something as bad as I want to do this, being at the race track when you’re not racing is probably one of the most difficult processes that you can go through” he said about not making the race last weekend in Atlanta. “It felt good to win the (Memphis Busch) race. It was good for Michael Waltrip Racing because sometimes you have to give them a little shot in the arm to show your guys that all their hard work will pay off.”

Reutimann is the oldest Cup Series Rookie in the field at 37 (he is just 38 days younger than I am), so you know he has literally spent a life time working to get where he is today, nerves and all. The long journey from dirt modifieds to NASCAR has perhaps made him even more appreciative of where he is and what he has. When he was Kyle Busch’s age, he was racing dirt tracks in Florida. In 1997, at age 27, Reutimann moved from dirt to the NASCAR AutoZone Elite, Southeast Series, where he was named Rookie of the Year. He went on to win three races in the Southeast Series, and finished second in the 2002 championship points standings. That same year, he hooked up with fellow Florida native Joe Nemecheck, who offered him a ride in a NEMCO Busch car. He was 32 years old, 14 years older than Busch was when he got his first Busch ride with Hendrick Motorsports.

David raced four Busch races in 2002, and seven in 2003, earning two top-5's, three top-10's, and earning his first pole when he qualified the No. 7 car for Greg Biffle in Memphis in 2003. When he announced at the end of 2003 he was looking for a full time ride in any series, he received a call from Darrell Waltrip asking him to come drive the No. 17 truck in the Craftsman Truck Series.

In three years driving for DW, David had one win, 17 top-5’s, 38 top-10’s, and six poles. Was it any wonder when Michael Waltrip was looking for a driver for his new team, and someone to take over for him in the No. 99 Aarons Dream Machine, he looked no further than to his brothers star driver?

With the troubles his two senior teammates have had this year, it has often seemed that the weight of the success of MWR has settled on Reutimann’s shoulders. Never has David let it pull him down, though. Rarely do you come across a frowning David Reutimann. While he waits for qualifying or a race, you can often find him playing with his daughter, Emilia, much like you can often find his boss playing with his daughter, Macy. When he is interviewed on TV, he is humble, and at the end of it, he seems surprised that the interviewer took the time to come talk to him in the first place.

Back in February, before the season even started, David was asked about how he felt his life was going to change this year, as he moved up from the Truck Series to Busch and Cup.

“The other day I was sitting by my race car at Daytona testing and I noticed three or four people standing there taking photos and then I’m walking to my hauler and two reporters are there waiting to interview me. The attention I am starting to get and the amount of information that I can read about what I’m doing is flattering. Even though sometimes it’s a little overwhelming, I feel lucky to be in this situation and look forward to meeting new people all season long. Basically, I want to make sure I enjoy my Raybestos Rookie season, not only for myself but for my fans as well.”

It might not have been the season he expected, but perseverance and patience have paid off.

While his season in Nextel Cup has been on the rough side, his year in the Dream Machine has been just the opposite. He has been in the top-5 for most of the year, and has been in the second place position on and off for most of the second half of the season. He has five top-5’s, 12 top-10’s, and last week, he survived 25 cautions to dominate the race in Memphis and get his first win in the Busch Series. This week, he followed that win up with a pole for yesterday’s race in Texas. Many people figured Carl Edwards would have wrapped up his championship in the Busch Series by now, but David is giving him a run for his money, even if the cards are stacked against him.

Back at Richmond, I had the chance to sit and talk to David’s dad, Buzzie, who was a second generation racer himself when David was growing up. Buzzie was all smiles when talking about what his son has accomplished this year. The elder Reutimann, who is a well known racer himself having made a name for himself in a late model dirt car carrying the No. 00…the same as his son drives now…was inducted into the Dirt Motorsports Hall of Fame back in 1997, having had a legendary career in racing across the country in the 60’s and 70’s. When asked about his son, Buzzie says he is the best driver in the family. When David is asked about his father, you can see the admiration he has for his chief cheerleader and mentor.

“He’s influenced everything I’ve ever done in more ways then he probably will ever know” Reutimann said in an interview earlier this year. “He’s my dad, first and foremost. I’ve been all over the United States and Canada with him racing… basically since birth. Then when my career started going and he was cutting back a little bit, he was with me all over the country racing. He’s basically kept me racing, and not really so much through money because we really didn’t have any. He’d been down there with me week in and week out thrashing on race cars and putting things together and trying to make (things) happen and get me noticed and keep me racing. I tell people a lot that I can’t ever remember my dad and I throwing a football at each other or throwing a baseball around the yard. But we’ve been in Victory Lane together. We’ve been broke together. Broke down alongside the road. We’ve argued and we’ve cried. We’ve done a lot of stuff, and we’ve spent more time together than a lot of people ever get a chance to spend with their parents. I feel pretty special that we were able to have that kind of relationship.”

Reutimann has signed a three year contract extension with MWR, and appears to be the teams’ future. It is a job he is happy to hold, and one he looks to make the most of in years to come.

“It’s no secret that we’ve had a tough year” he said last week after winning in Memphis. “This just goes to show because our Cup program has been getting stronger and our Busch program has been good all year and in contention to win. I feel like MWR is getting strong as it goes -- we still have more ground to cover, but I’m very proud that the people that are there have hung in there with us. They continue to build me very good race cars so we can continue to go out there and do things like we did yesterday -- I would like to do it more often.”

I have a feeling we have not seen the last of David Reutimann in Victory Lane.

A quick side note about my column last week. I mentioned that it was announced on Sirius that they had been rated the top sports radio station anywhere. I had a talk with Andrew FitzPatrick, who is the head of Sports Programming Media with Sirius, this week, and he clarified that comment which was made on Sirius Speedway, stating that Sirius doesn’t belong to the Arbitron ratings system, so they have no way to know exactly how many subscribers are listening to Sirius NASCAR radio at any given time. However, he does know that of all the Sirius sports channels, the NASCAR channel is the most listened to channel, and they are very proud of that fact.

The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.