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This Victory Was A Little More Special

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 9, 2007

One of the best stories from David Reutimann's Busch Series victory Oct. 27 at Memphis didn't get much attention. The special flame paint scheme on Reutimann's Aaron's Sales and Lease-sponsored Toyota was designed by Wiley King, an 18-year-old man from Mississippi who has a slow-growing brain tumor called a craniopharyngioma. King's design was chosen as part of the St. Jude Children's Hospital "Design A Dream" contest.

Wiley's last job before being diagnosed with the tumor at age 16 was working at a NASCAR store. He and his brother were part of a team at their school that competed in an international design competition to race and build a "moon buggy" for NASA. They finished 11th in the nation.

In this week's edition of his diary, Reutimann talks about hosting Wiley and his family at a luncheon this week at the Michael Waltrip Racing shop, as well as this weekend's Busch and Nextel Cup events at Phoenix.

It was special to be part of that situation. The young man has a brain tumor, and when he designed the car, he could see somewhat. But as time progressed, the tumor has affected his vision to the point where he can't see very much, so his dad actually had to give him the play-by-play of what was happening during the race.

I'm sure it was pretty spectacular for him to know that the car he was involved with won the race. Winning's cool, but when you get a chance to share it with somebody like that, it makes it that much more special.

From a racing standpoint, the glow from our win at Memphis pretty well diminished by the time we left Texas last weekend. After winning the pole for the Busch race, we cut down a tire in the race and wound up finishing 18th. And the in the Cup race, we were having a really bad day and then the motor blew and made it a short day. So it was one of those snap-back-to-reality things.

The motor situation was weird, because all the vital signs were good - it never ran hot or anything. I looked down at the gauges and it had good oil pressure, oil temperature wasn't high and the water temperature was around 210. Everything visible looked good except for the smoke blowing out the exhaust.

We've had a lot of motor failures this year (five), and it's not a happy place to be. All of our motors come from Toyota Racing Development. The motors come with plug wires, bell housing, clutch, everything. We put it in, and TRD has a motor tuner that comes, and each time the motor is cranked up, the motor tuner has to be present. Basically, nobody touches the motor, so any failure-related stuff is generally in their corner.

We're brining the same car we won Memphis with to the Busch race, so we're excited about that. Hopefully, this will be a good weekend for us.

Tony Fabrizio

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