Stremme left Cup in effort to land better job there

David Stremme may well have felt that he had arrived back in 2006. He was driving in the NASCAR Cup Series full time for Chip Ganassi Racing, one of a few dozen elite drivers to compete NASCAR’s top series.
 
But Stremme’s rookie season in Ganassi’s No. 40 Dodge was , well, rookie-like. He didn’t have a top-10 finish, but he had several in the top 20 – and several in the bottom 20.
 
His second season, 2007, was a little better, with three top-10 finishes and a nine-place jump in the final driver standings.
 
But late in the season, Ganassi told Stremme he wouldn’t be back for 2008. IndyCar champion Dario Franchitti would be making the move to NASCAR, and Stremme was the odd man out.
 
“At the time it wasn’t good because a lot of rides had already closed up,” Stremme said. “The chances of getting something decent weren’t good.

"In this sport, you get tagged pretty easy. Obviously, if you don't perform well [you get pushed out], and a lot of [that performance is based on] the team you're with."

So 74 races into his Cup career, Stremme had to start over. It wouldn’t be easy, for a fired driver doesn’t have many choices. He wouldn’t be able to land a ride at, say, Hendrick Motorsports or Joe Gibbs Racing, because they were simply out of reach.
 
He could go to a lower-tier Cup team, but that would have been a larger gamble, for missing races and running at the back of the field are hardly ways to impress car owners.
   
So Stremme took a step back, as it were. Rusty Wallace Racing was expanded to two cars for the ’08 Nationwide season, and Wallace wanted Stremme to share his No. 64 Chevrolet and help mentor his son Steve, who would drive the team’s No. 66 Chevy.
 
“Rusty called me,” Stremme said. “I drove an ARCA race for Rusty, and Stephen and I have been friends. You look at Rusty’s stuff, and it’s all first class. You know you’ve got good equipment. I was like, ‘Yeah, we’ll do it.’ It started out just running 15, 16 races. Where the company was at and where we’re at in owners points, we ended up doing more.”
 
Stremme has missed three Nationwide races this year as RWR contracted Max Papis for the road races, but it has still been an impressive run for him. He has posted four top-five and 11 top-10 finishes in 22 races and stands 12th in the Nationwide standings.
 
And look what happened to his old team. Ganassi shut down the No. 40 team because of a lack of funding, and Franchitti hasn’t raced in Cup since late June.
 
“My whole career is weird ...,” Stremme said. "Say I would’ve stayed with the 40. I probably would’ve been out of a ride this year. And nothing against their organization, but this year they haven’t performed that well.
 
“Maybe it’s the best thing that I’m over here running this. A lot of guys have done it.”
 
Not a lot of guys have been able to get back to Cup, but Stremme seems headed in that direction. He signed with Penske Racing as a test driver and appears to be the leading candidate to replace Ryan Newman in the team’s No. 12 Dodge in the Sprint Cup Series next season.
 
Stremme understands the politics of Cup racing, where talent alone sometimes isn’t enough. But he also knows the importance of performance – and knew the pressure was on when he took the RWR job.
 
“I knew I had to run good to have a chance at another Cup ride,” Stremme said. “The other thing is, a lot of the guys coming in were open-wheel drivers and people that haven’t had stock-car experience. It seems like every year, someone comes into Cup and then gets shuffled out.
 
“I was there two years, and I was able to show a lot of improvement with the team I was with. We just didn’t have the funding. They thought they could get it with Dario, and that didn’t happen either.
 
“With Rusty’s program, I had to run good. We’ve run really good. I judge us off of the [Richard] Childress [Racing] cars and off of the independent Nationwide teams, and we stack right up there with them. I feel like we get better and better.”
 
Stremme said his No. 64 team has slipped some lately, and that’s after challenging for wins early in the year.
 
But Stremme has confidence in Wallace as an owner to help turn things around and get Stremme back contending again.
 
“Rusty’s not the type of guy who wants to run bad,” Stremme said. “He’s going to do everything he can to run good and try to win races. That’s what I want to surround myself, is with good people.
 
“The other thing is, I’ve talked to a lot of veteran drivers who have been around this sport awhile. At the time, I didn’t talk to Rusty about it, but since driving for him, he’s been able to help me out a lot. I just ask him questions. He’s mentally helped me quite a bit, what I’ve been going through.”
 
So instead of running away after getting fired, Stremme turned around and faced his future. And it could be back in Cup.
 
"Our sport is very different than other ones because we can go back into another series and run,” Stremme said. “You don’t see an NFL player go back to college and play ball and then come back. It’s a tough deal. It’s cool because we can run with the Cup drivers when they come over [to the Nationwide Series]. That’s what’s given me the opportunity to look at Cup rides again.”

• Mentioned Drivers:
• David Stremme