39 is the new 19: David Reutimann finds success for Michael Waltrip Racing

By Rea White - Associate Editor

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Michael Waltrip Racing's David Reutimann won Monday's rain-delayed, rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

Tim Parks
NASCAR Scene

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David Reutimann didn't match the mold.

As the NASCAR Cup Series started eyeing increasingly younger drivers, the 34-year-old got the chance to run one Cup race for Michael Waltrip. As owners started turning toward drivers with open-wheel experience, the Zephyrills, Fla., native carried a resume filled with success in stock cars running in the NASCAR Southwest Series.

Yet Waltrip decided to take a gamble on Reutimann, signing him to drive full time for his developing team.

So far, that seems to be working out.

In 2007, Reutimann made 26 or 36 races in the first season of Michael Waltrip Racing's existence as a Cup team on its own. Last season he made all the races and finished 22nd in the standings. Then Monday, he earned his first career victory, gambling on staying out on a late pit stop and then watching as rain washed out the remaining laps of the Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

For Reutimann, it was another step in what was once a traditional path to NASCAR’s top circuit - but one that is no longer followed by most drivers entering the series. He was more than 10 years older than three of the four other drivers in his rookie class - and the other was Formula One transfer Juan Pablo Montoya.

Just what was it about this soft-spoken, respectful 30-something that drew Waltrip to him?

"We couldn't find anybody else," Waltrip says, teasing his driver. "Works for cheap. Don't ask a whole lot out of anybody. So it just worked out for us."

In all honesty, Reutimann is truly a Waltrip family find.

But it wasn't Michael who discovered Reutimann - it was his brother, three-time Cup champion and current television announcer Darrell Waltrip.

And that caught the driver by surprise. Reutimann was working for Joe Nemechek at Nemco Motorsports, where said that at that time he had planned to be driving in what is now known as the Nationwide Series before sponsorship fell through. So he was working in the fab shop instead, building crush panels and the like. He says the guys on the team, including current co-worker Dwayne Bigger, were always riding him about his chance to be a driver.

"They would get on the loud speaker, 'Roger Penske is on line one', 'Richard Childress is on line two,'" Reutimann said. "All kinds of guys. This would go off and on during the course of the day."

So when the real call came in, Reutimann was caught off guard.

"Then I got home," he said. "Phone rings. I pick it up. The guy said he's Darrell Waltrip. Come on, I can't even get home, and they're bugging me. I stuttered. I started to say like, 'Man, you guys just leave me alone.' The caller ID was on the back of the phone. I flipped it over and looked. It was not a number I recognized. Certainly wasn't a 704 area code. The name Waltrip was attached to the end of it. 'Wow, this is for real.' It was Darrell Waltrip calling me at home just before dinner. That was phenomenal.

"I had never spoken to Darrel Waltrip in my life. I watched him on TV; that was it. I never shook his hand. Never even sat close to the guy. Never got a chance to see him in the garage. Never had any interaction with him at all except for that one night at home. Said he had a truck team, a Toyota truck team, was wondering if I was interested in driving it."

Reutimann's reaction?

"I offered at that point to drive to wherever he was and sign on a dotted line," he said.

Since joining Waltrip's team for the 2004 season, he has practically been a part of the Waltrip family.

"It's been a great relationship," he said. "… He's been like a second dad to me. He chewed my butt just like my dad has before. Every time he's done it, it has made me a better driver. I owe a lot to Darrel Waltrip and the Waltrip family."

They owe a lot to Reutimann as well, though.

He won a truck race with Darrell Waltrip Motorsports in 2005, his second full season with the team and then finished third in the standings a year later. He won his first Nationwide race, again driving for Michael Waltrip, in 2007.

Meanwhile, he was also working on building his Cup program with the fledgling MWR organization, the group that also helped bring Toyota into the sport.

Michael Waltrip says that there was no gamble in picking Reutimann. He may not have fit the demographic of the hot trend at the time, but he certainly wasn't a risk either.

Waltrip saw a lot of value in signing Reutimann - and has not been disappointed with that decision.

"My brother started a truck team," he said. "We wanted David to drive the truck. He was our first choice. If we could get him, that's who we wanted. … We knew the commitment that he has to racing. He is all-in when it comes to racing a car. He was born and raised in the back of a hauler chasing his dad all over the country racing dirt cars and winning races. So it's just a part of his DNA; it's who he is.

"He was a guy that was an easy sell for me to [sponsor] Aaron's because of how he handles himself and the way he races a car. His first year in Cup, of the three [teams we had] in '07, he clearly outran the other two. He was the fastest guy we had; '08, that was the case again. So every race that he would run, every lap he would make, it proved to us that we made a good decision. I love David. He's a great person."

As to Reutimann, he has just tried to make the most of his chance.

Monday, he did just that.

The guy who bucked the trend now sits 13th in the standings, six points out of a berth in the Chase For The Sprint Cup. The driver who once faced questions about being a longshot to make it at the Cup level is doing just that.

"Through many interviews, I sat where people asked me, 'How does it feel to know you probably will never get to the Cup level?' I would ask them why," Reutimann said. "They would say, 'It's a long shot.' It's a long shot I even made it this far, so why should I start worrying about the odds? It's one of those deals with I figured if I acted the right way and did the right things on the race track, did those things, at some point somebody would want me somewhere. I was hoping anyway. So I was just racing. That's all I was trying to do, keep my head down and focus in on what we had to do at the time, hoping at some point maybe somebody may notice."

Originally, he just wanted to race, to follow in the footsteps of his father, Buzzie Reutimann, who was inducted into the DIRT Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1997.

He started out just wanting to be competitive - and now he keeps that same perspective as he competes against NASCAR's elite.

"When I was at East Bay Raceway running for $350 to win in a Late Model feature, I wasn't concerned about being here; I was concerned about making it to next week," he said. "That has been the mentality my whole life. Now as you come up and you finally get this opportunity, you're like, 'Wow, this is really, really big, more than I could ever imagine. Things like this don't happen to guys like me.' It doesn't. … It doesn't happen.

"I'm thrilled. I know I'm blessed to be in the situation I am with the team I am, the car owner, the people that surround me. So I never take any of that stuff for granted, never, ever. Not a day goes by that I'm not thankful for what I have, good days or bad, because opportunities like this are few and far between. I've been blessed to be in the right situation."