Waltrip Racing Celebrates Success, But Refuses to Acknowledge the Arduous Path There

Former MWR teammates David Reutimann (00) and Martin truex, Jr (56)
draft around Talladega in the fall of 2011.

Th 2012 season proved to be Michael Waltrip Racing's best yet. They won three races with new hire Clint Bowyer. Both Boywer and Martin Truex, Jr, now MWR's most senior driver, made the Chase for the first time in the team's history. Bowyer had a shot at the title and finished second in points. The fact is that the three car team had a banner year this past season.

The fact is also that, while 2012 was very kind to MWR, most all of their previous seasons were anything but.

Michael Waltrip started the team which bears his name in 2006, preparing to run three cars in the 2007 Daytona 500. Waltrip had a deal to drive his familiar NAPA-sponsored car and the team had also signed Dale Jarrett to drive a Camry draped in his familiar UPS colors. But there was also a third car that had yet to be filled. Some speculated the driver would be Travis Kvapil. Still others speculated Scott Wimmer would take the helm. Neither driver got the ride.

Reutimann walks from his demolished Toyota
at California in 2007

Instead it was announced at a block party in Zephyrhills, Florida that David Reutimann, a dirt track racer who had driven three seasons for Waltrip's brother Darrell in the Craftsman Truck Series, would climb behind the wheel of a Camry co-sponsored by Domino's Pizza and Burger King. The car would also carry the number 00 on the sides, a number which had always been run on dirt cars by Reutimann's grandfather and father, dirt track legend "Buzzie" Reutimann. Getting his big break in the Cup Series with his family number meant this was going to be a special year for Reutimann.
Well, that dream season quickly turned into a nightmare. Waltrip's car was found to have an unknown substance, supposedly jet fuel, in his No. 55's intake manifold prompting Nascar to confiscate his car and force him to qualify for the 500 through the Gatorade Duel races. He did and all three MWR entries made the field. But as the year progressed, Waltrip missed a whopping 22 races, Jarrett missed 12 and Reutimann missed only 10 events.

While Waltrip and Jarrett have since retired and every one of those original sponsors have left for other teams, or the sport altogether, Reutimann remained a constant at MWR.

In 2007 he was involved in a horrific wreck, which would have probably killed him had it not been for the safer barriers at California Speedway and was forced to qualify for every race from his debut in Daytona that same year through the spring Texas race in 2008. Through thick and thin, good and bad , success and failure, Reutimann stood behind his team believing that they would, one day, enjoy the same level of achievement as teams like Hendrick, Roush and Gibbs. At one point, Reutimann had the opportunity to join Richard Childress Racing, but turned the offer down to remain with the team that gave him his first big opportunity.

After winning a Busch Series race and finishing a very solid second in the series points in 2007, Reutimann finished 16th in points after nearly making the Chase in 2009 and also scored MWR's first Cup Series win in the Coca-Cola 600. But the race was rain shortened so, naturally, the race never really counted as an actual win in the eyes of many fans. So one year later at Chicagoland Speedway, Reutimann outran Jeff Gordon and Carl Edwards to score his, and his team's, second Cup Series win and silenced his critics once and for all.



Reutimann celebrates his Chicago win with his No. 00 team

This success also earned Reutimann the nickname of "the Franchise" since he was MWR's most accomplished driver to date.
But after a mediocre 2011 season, with three weeks left in the season, Waltrip showed his true colors when he released Reutimann from his contract one year early, replaced him with Nascar's answer to a really bad itch, Mark Martin, and called the move "just business." That is the thanks Reutimann got after everything he had done for Waltrip and his organization. Drivers like Bowyer, Truex and Martin would not have touched MWR with a 50-foot pole when the team started. But with Reutimann pouring his blood, sweat and tears into his No. 00 team to make them better and better, it was easy for these drivers to suddenly take notice.

While MWR won three races and made the Chase in 2012, Reutimann was reduced from a race winner to a field filler when he was tabbed to race the No. 10 car for Tommy Baldwin Racing when Danica Patrick was not behind the wheel. It was as if this was MWR's first year on the circuit and they simply came out of nowhere and won. This was simply not the case. It was through the hard work of a quiet, soft spoken dirt racer from South Florida that MWR is running up front every week. The team simply turns a blind eye, refusing to acknowledge where they came from and those who helped to get them there. How can the team enjoy their accomplishments without remembering the struggles they faced, the people they faced them with and those who helped them through it? It is simply disrespectful, childish and arrogant behavior from an owner who prides himself on representing the sport of Nascar racing with as much integrity as possible.

David Reutimann will probably never get the credit he rightly deserves for the role he played in building MWR and that is truly a shame.