DAVID REUTIMANN, No. 00 BURGER KING TOYOTA: COMMENT ON THE RAIN AND HOW IT WILL AFFECT YOUR PREPERATION FOR THE RACE. “It’s not going to have the affect that we would like. As usual we made all qualifying runs so we have no race runs on the car so we need some time to at least get a direction, even if it was 15 or 20 minutes, just get a feel of which direction it was going to go. It’s a huge detriment if we don’t get on the racetrack but you have to do what you need to do to get in the race. It’s one of those situations where if you make all these race runs and you end up going home and you’re thinking about what a good race car you had if you could have got in the show. We don’t want to have that feeling so that’s why we did that, even thought we knew there was a chance of weather. Your hand is kind of forced for you. Hopefully we’ll be able to go off the notes we had from the race earlier in the year because we had a pretty good car at that point and maybe that will give us a starting point if we can’t get on the racetrack.”
IS THERE ANY OTHER TEAM THAT YOU CAN LEAN ON FOR INFORMATION? “In the Busch Series and Truck series, it’s a reality. That’s the way we do it over there and it works. Over here on this side, it’s not as open by any means within the organizations. Sometimes you’ll give each other information about tire pressures and other things but for the most part you’re on your own.”
HOW DIFFERENT IS THE COT HERE VERSUS THE TRUCK? DOES YOUR EXPERIENCE IN TRUCKS HELP? “No because the limited travel that we have with the COT deal. You’re on bump stops and it such a violent transition a lot of times and you just drive them completely different. Other than knowing the basic layout of the track and what it does, it doesn’t transfer over, unfortunately.”
YOU RAN WELL ENOUGH TO FINISH IN THE TOP-10 AT CALIFORNIA AND RICHMOND. HAS IT JUST TAKEN TIME FOR YOU GUYS TO RUN WELL? “I think that’s what it really comes down to is that it’s just taken us time to get to where we need to be. The guys have been doing a really good job all year. It takes a while for all the pieces to start coming together. The pit stops have been very good, the cars have been much, much better off the trailer so you don’t have to work as hard to get in that box that you need to be in and it shows on the racetrack. We just need to keep doing those same things and not stray away from what’s working for us right now.”
WHAT’S BEEN THE BIGGEST THING THAT YOU’VE LEARNED SO FAR THIS YEAR? “I’ve learned so much. It’s been very humbling this year, for sure [smiles]. I’ve learned more about people and the people that are around me and what it takes to try to be successful. And I also learned just how difficult this deal truly is. People say how tough the Cup series is and you go there thinking how tough it is. But then you get here and it’s way more intense and way more difficult than you ever even gave it credit for. You knew it was going to be tough coming in but man, the more weeks you stay here the more weeks you realize this is tough and it’ll never get any easier.”
IN THE LAST FEW WEEKS, HAS IT BEEN NICE TO SEE THE INTEREST IN DAVID REUTIMANN? “It’s been flattering to have my name thrown around with some really good organizations, not that MWR is not a good organization and will become a great organization at some point. They’re working hard towards that. But to have your name thrown around in those circles, yeah, that’s pretty special.”
YOU HAVE RACED ON MANY SHORT TRACKS IN YOUR CAREER. WHAT IS YOUR BEST RAIN DELAY STORY? “I remember running a small block modified race in Middletown, New York around October, the Eastern States 200 weekend. It rained all day and they were scraping the track, it was a dirt track, and it rained and rained. We finally got on the racetrack and we started our race at 3:30 in the morning. That was a pretty amazing deal. It was one of those deals where we raced the small block deal early that morning as it turned out and we had the big block race later on that afternoon so I raced twice in the same day. One was at 3:30 in the morning and the other one was a Noon.”
DID YOU LEAVE THE TRACK? “No, I just stayed there. I stuck my head under a water hose and rinsed the dirt out of my hair and we went back and raced later on that afternoon. You look back on things like that and it’s pretty cool.
DO YOU REMEMBER WHERE YOU FINISHED? “I broke a motor in the small block race and I think we run 12th or 13th in the big block race. The way my season had been going, that was a pretty good finish for that year.”