Friday, Sept. 24, 2004 | 9:23 a.m.
Brian Hilderbrand covers motor sports for the Las Vegas Sun. His motor sports notebook appears Friday. He can be reached at [email protected] or (702) 259-4089.
David Reutimann, the most successful rookie in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series this season, came within about 60 seconds of blowing his big opportunity to drive for team owner Darrell Waltrip this year.
Reutimann was sitting at home one evening last fall when the phone rang. The voice on the other end of the line identified himself as Darrell Waltrip and said he was calling to offer Reutimann a job driving the Waltrip's No. 17 Toyota entry in the Truck Series. Thinking the call was a joke, Reutimann came dangerously close to hanging up.
"I was working at Nemco Motorsports as a fabricator ... and the guys at the shop would kid around with me during the week," Reutimann explained. "They would come over the intercom and say, 'David, it's Roger Penske on line 1; he wants you to run a Cup car next year.' The next day, it would be Rick Hendrick calling, or Richard Childress -- you name it.
"So when I got the phone call at home, I had absolutely no reason to think it was Darrell Waltrip calling me at home; I just thought it was one of the guys at the shop. I didn't hang up, but I know I didn't believe it was Darrell Waltrip on the line when I first got that phone call. I actually played along for about a minute or so before I looked at the caller ID and finally realized that this was not an area code I was familiar with."
Fortunately for Reutimann, Waltrip was understanding.
"He was stuttering and stumbling and I couldn't tell if he was trying to answer me or not," Waltrip said of that first phone call. "He was quite intimidated but he finally realized -- I think he must have looked at his caller ID or something -- that it was me and that we were talking seriously and so we made a deal."
Waltrip, who had never met Reutimann prior to making the call, said he decided to hire Reutimann on the advice of team manager Bobby Kennedy and Waltrip's brother, Michael, who had raced against Reutimann in several Busch races last season.
Reutimann, 34, has fashioned a typical rookie season -- flashes of brilliance (a pole and a third-place finish in his second race and seven other top-10 finishes) at times and the typical growing pains of a driver learning new tracks and a new form of racing. Reutimann is leading the Raybestos Rookie of the Year standings and is 14th in series points going into Saturday night's Las Vegas 350 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Waltrip, a three-time NASCAR Winston Cup champion, said he has complete faith in his driver and doesn't regret pairing a rookie driver with a first-year team.
"When David started off, I thought, 'man, this guy doesn't even drive like a rookie.' Then we had some races where I said, 'now I realize why we have that yellow stripe back there,' " Waltrip said.
"But we know that he has a lot of talent and we have been and will continue to be very patient with him and bring him along. We understand when things happen to him ... he's going through a real learning curve but he has a tremendous amount of talent and we are thrilled to death that he's our driver."
Waltrip, who won 84 Cup races during his career, was asked what promoted him to hire a rookie as opposed to a more inexperienced driver for his start-up team.
"Because I'm a more experience guy," Waltrip said. "There's something about racing where sometimes an unknown is a whole lot more intriguing and a whole lot more exciting than a known. When you hire a driver that's experienced or has been around a while, you pretty well know what you're getting.
"All of us are always looking for that diamond in the rough. David was a perfect candidate for us. He's going to be with us forever -- whatever we do -- because he's young enough and smart enough that I know I can teach him all the good habits instead of all the bad habits."
Reutimann said working with Waltrip has been a dream come true -- from that fateful phone call right up to last week's fifth-place finish at New Hampshire International Speedway.
"It's like a storybook deal; I just knew there was no way in the world Darrell Waltrip was calling me at home -- one of the greatest drivers of all time who has ever sat in anything -- and asking me to drive for him," Reutimann said. "But I sure was glad it was him at the other end of the call."
The series announced Thursday that Bridgestone will award a $10,000 bonus to the driver who wins the pole for Saturday night's Bridgestone 400 Presented by Corona at LVMS. Qualifying for Saturday's 166-lap race will be held today from 4:30-6 p.m. ...
Champ Car co-owner Paul Gentilozzi said Thursday that the series is working on a new television package for the 2005 season that would include both "cable channels and networks." The series' races currently are shown on a delayed basis on Spike TV. Gentilozzi said he hoped to announce both the new television package and the 2005 schedule in the next two to three weeks. ...
Gentilozzi also announced Thursday that next month's race on the streets of Seoul, South Korea, officially has been canceled.
Starr won the 2002 race at LVMS and finished second to Las Vegas native Brendan Gaughan in last year's race.
"Las Vegas Motor Speedway is a very special place to me," Starr said. "Not only did I win my first Craftsman Truck race there, but I won my first NASCAR West event at Las Vegas in 2000.
"We took second last year right behind hometown favorite Brendan Gaughan. Now that Gaughan is gone, we should be able to put our No. 75 Spears Chevy Silverado in first. There have been seven truck races at the speedway and only one driver has won twice; I would like to be the second driver to score two victories."
Starr is eighth in points with one victory and 10 top-10 finishes coming into Saturday's race.
Bogart, a former NASCAR West Series regular from El Cajon, Calif., will attempt to qualify the truck for Saturday's Las Vegas 350. Lance Hooper, who will serve as Bogart's crew chief, has driven the truck in five races this season.
Bogart, 29, is bringing the Washington Mutual sponsorship to the ThorSport Racing team for this race only but said he hoped to expand the relationship.
NASCAR fined Kurt Busch's crew chief, Jimmy Fennig, $1,000 for a fuel-cell spacer infraction at last weekend's NASCAR Nextel Cup race at New Hampshire. Robbie Reiser, Matt Kenseth's crew chief, received the same fine for an identical infraction the week before at Richmond.
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