May 31, 2009
By Nick Blake
After 75 races, 24 hours, a smack with the wall, “Billy Bad Butt” and a career changing decision by him and crew chief Rodney Childers, David Reutimann is a Sprint Cup winner.
After 5 years, 83 starts, being spun by Brian Vickers in the 2005 Sprint Showdown (Then called Nextel Open) and being mired outside the top 10 in Nationwide Series points all season, Mike Bliss returned to victory lane at Lowe’s, and James Finch’s party has been extended at Phoenix Racing.
After serving a 16 month sentence for tax fraud related charges, Gene Haas was released from prison, and went to straight to Charlotte to see his team, under new ownership, win it’s first ever race. The best any one of Haas’s teams had ever finished in a non points race were a pair of runner up finishes in the 2005 and 2007 Sprint All-Star Race Showdowns. Their best finish in a points race was a fifth with Johnny Sauter at Richmond in September of 2007. Now, with driver/owner Tony Stewart, they saw their collaboration come together in success as Stewart won the first race for what is now Stewart-Haas Racing.
Sure, NASCAR is always under massive pressure these days, but when the sport returned home to the future Hall Of Fame, All-Star Race and the only 600 mile race of the season, I know that NASCAR made all the right moves in trying to bring everyone together to continue what makes the sport great. The ratings may be declining, but the races continue to be outstanding. If you’re not watching, that’s too bad, because there are still millions of faithful fans that tune in every week to watch every lap of every race, and local fans that shell out all the money they can muster to go to races that they’ve been going to for years. The ratings will help itself over time. There are other issues that need to be addressed though….
1...Saving Private Ragan. Sure, I could be discussing how disheartening it was to see Dale Earnhardt Jr. finish 40th in front of all the Troops on Memorial Day, but I’d rather address a driver whose career is at stake if he doesn’t pick up the ball and run with it soon, David Ragan.
Jack Roush’s famed number #6 is at the back of the Roush contingency, so far back that he’s 32nd in points. It could be the curse of Mark Martin, who every team he’s left since leaving Roush has turned to dust. Try the #01 of MB2/Ginn Racing, despite almost winning the Daytona 500 in 2007, the team and number are no longer in existence.
Same goes for the #8 he drove last year at DEI. With Roush needing to scale back by cutting one team (though I’m not sure how their interest in Danica Patrick fares into all this) the #6 is in jeopardy of falling into that same category. UPS took a gamble by sponsoring the driver who finished 13th in points last year with ease. This was supposed to be a breakout year for the Unadilla, Georgia native, instead all the Roush Fenway cars have had a slow time getting jump-started after Matt Kenseth’s two victories to begin the season. Ragan has had the slowest start of all, after a 6th at Daytona, he hasn’t had a top ten since. In fact, he’s had five finishes of 25th or worse. Not Chase material, and more importantly, not job saving material.
2...David Reutimann’s historic win. For many reasons, Reutimann’s win gives him the biggest boost of confidence any driver could ever receive. At 39 years old, his career is one of the odder career developments, in his third full season, he’s shaken the rookie rust off and become an underdog threat, if there is such a term. Most drivers reach this step in their mid-20’s. Not Reutimann. Even in the Nationwide Series, He finished a career best second to Carl Edwards in the 2007 standings and won at Memphis Motorsports Park. Then he backed it up by finishing a disappointing 7th last season with no wins. Him coming out of nowhere to run this well in the Cup car is simply remarkable.
Reutimann also made another first. He is the first driver to ever win the Coca-Cola 600 without racing in the All-Star Race the week before. He finished fourth in the Sprint Showdown.
3...The only person that should be criticizing NASCAR for the lengthy rain delay is David Reutimann himself. After all, NASCAR was under such heavy criticism for the way the Daytona 500 ended, they had a tough time coming to grips with the fact that rain was robbing them of arguably the second biggest race of the season as well. They wanted to get all 600 miles in, we all wanted too. I’m a fan of racing, I could have stayed up 'till midnight to watch the Coke 600 finish in completion, and there were 42 other guys that wanted to see that race, as well as the Daytona 500 finish in completion.
Problem was, they couldn’t do it, and they tried as hard as possible to address any open windows to go back racing, they did everything they could to dry the track without blowing the blow driers up. In the end, which ended up being two hours later, NASCAR threw in the towel. A move that they didn’t want to come to. A move that ended up under criticism anyways.
Had they called the race a half hour after the final caution flew, and the rains stopped, would there be backlash then?
4...Was Carl Long’s suspension necessary? Yes and no.
Yes. It was necessary because he did break the rules. If your engine is larger than 358.000 cubic inches, there’s a problem. There’s no special treatment, everyone get the same penalty for the same infraction. It wouldn’t be fair to suspend Jeff Gordon 12 races, and if Carl Long committed the same infraction, he gets off because he drives and works for an underfunded team that hasn’t raced in a points race since 2006.
No. There are times where you just have to give a team a break. So what if the engine was a little big, While he was slated to be on the outside pole for the Sprint Showdown, there was a 99.9% chance he doesn’t even finish the race in the top 20. (He finished 35th, dead last.)
So why swat a harmless fly? It hurts that NASCAR had to pick a battle with this poor guy. Now (For now, a hearing for his appeal is on June 2nd.) he’s out $200,000 and more, if you break it down further, and he now has -200 points on the season. So I’m pretty sure the fans are going to start the “I have more points than Carl Long” thing that they did with Michael Waltrip for the first 11 weeks of the 2007 season. It sort of makes you wonder if this was supposed to provide a distraction from the Jeremy Mayfield suspension.
If it was, it didn’t work.
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