Michael Waltrip Racing's David Reutimann 'backbone' of organization

It began as nothing but a big joke for NASCAR Sprint Cup driver David Reutimann.

Riding high after a then career-best fourth-place finish earlier this season at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Reutimann playfully dubbed himself “The Franchise” of Michael Waltrip Racing in a conversation with MWR general manager Ty Norris.

Then, a couple of weeks later, the moniker resurfaced above the door of Reutimann’s No. 00 car, thanks to the secretive efforts of crew chief Rodney Childers and fellow crew members, who wanted to tease their driver. Reutimann just played along.

This was self-deprecating humor at its finest for Reutimann, easily one of the humblest and most likable drivers in the Cup garage. In reality, the 39-year-old Florida native hardly considers himself the future or cornerstone of the third-year MWR outfit.

The irony is that others now do.

“We’ve always seen him that way because of his focus, his commitment and his talent and his loyalty to our organization,” says Michael Waltrip, who co-owns MWR with Rob Kauffman and competes as a teammate to Reutimann. “We’ve just always seen him as a guy that we could hang our hat on. And as an owner it feels good to have a guy like David being someone that you feel comfortable telling that to, and he takes it as a compliment, and it makes him want to work harder instead of maybe thinking that he owns the joint.”

Reutimann’s upbringing and modest beginnings in the sport make it easy to see why he doesn’t consider himself anyone special.

His father, “Buzzie,” recorded in the neighborhood of 1,200 documented short-track wins over a lengthy career that spanned several decades. But Buzzie Reutimann, whose lone NASCAR start came in 1962 at Florida’s Golden Gate Speedway, wasn’t changed by success.

“He just came, he showed up, kicked some butt, and then he left, and you really didn’t hear much about him,” says Brian Pattie, the crew chief for Cup driver Juan Pablo Montoya and a longtime friend of the Reutimann family. “He was kind of the quiet guy, and I think David’s kind of the same suit.”

Reutimann is making plenty of noise on the track this year. He is enjoying a breakout season after struggling for years to make it to NASCAR’s top series, which he joined a couple weeks shy of his 37th birthday. He has more top-fives, top-10s and poles in 2009 than he earned in all of 2007 and 2008 combined.

“My dad always told me that no matter how fast you are or how good a job you think you’re doing, there’s always somebody out there who can probably do it better,” Reutimann says. “So with that being said, you just go out there and do the best you can, and when things go your way, you just realize how fortunate you are to have things go your way. I don’t ever buy into the whole ‘me’ concept of things.”

That’s one of the reasons why Reutimann, arguably this season’s most improved driver, seemingly hasn’t let his gains go to his head. Instead of taking the credit for his improvements, which have been highlighted by his first career win in this year’s rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600, Reutimann points to Childers and the overall strides of MWR as a group for making his success possible.

“It comes down to the organization you’re with and the people that are around you,” he says. “[If I won] one race or 20 races or whatever, my outlook would remain the same no matter what. Now if I was to haul the car here by myself and unload it, get it through inspection, make it through practice and race it myself and come down pit road and jump out and change tires and do all that on my own and engineer it myself, maybe I’d be willing to take a little more credit for it.

“But that’s not how this whole thing works, so for me, that’s not going to change. And I don’t see how other people can really view it any different, either.”

Even as Reutimann closes in on a possible berth in the Chase For The Sprint Cup – he is 14th in the standings, 76 points out of the 12th and final spot in the field with seven races left before the Chase – his confidence in himself and his driving abilities could use some refining. Childers, who joined Reutimann this season after previously working with Elliott Sadler at the team now known as Richard Petty Motorsports, is attuned to his driver’s struggles to see himself as others do.

So Childers tries to keep Reutimann thinking positive, reminding him of the good times like that win in the Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, where Reutimann gave MWR its first trip to a Cup victory lane as company.

Reutimann also has two poles, three more top-fives and four top-10s to back up his LMS effort.

“I probably tell him a good bit that he’s just as good as any of these guys out here, and we have just as good of a team as any of the guys out here and try to just stay positive all the time,” Childers says. “I think sometimes he probably feeds off my confidence too because there’s places I have more confidence than others, and he’s the same way. But I think this team in general all year this year, their confidence level has been up, and we feel like we have a shot of qualifying on the pole every week and we have a shot of trying to win the race every week, and I think he feeds off of that.”

While Reutimann might not always have the most faith in himself, his breakthrough season has caused others to believe Michael Waltrip Racing can compete with NASCAR’s top teams. One such person is Martin Truex Jr., who says Reutimann’s strong season influenced his decision to leave Earnhardt Ganassi Racing and join MWR full time next year when Waltrip cuts back to a partial schedule.

So while Reutimann doesn’t “view myself as being any kind of a leader within the organization,” others see it much differently.

“In reality he is the franchise of Michael Waltrip Racing,” says Childers, noting that he put Reutimann’s real name back on the car after a couple weeks of bad luck. “And it was a joke to begin with, but it’s really reality. The company did go through some struggles in the beginning, and he has been that backbone that has been there the whole time and gave 110 percent every day that he’s ever been an employee there and been a driver. You can’t ever take that away from him.”