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Doesn't feel like a rookie anymore

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 16, 2007

With 59 races and 12,956 laps under his belt this year, Zephyrhills' David Reutimann heads into the final race of his first season competing full-time in NASCAR's top two divisions. He is fourth out of five drivers in the Nextel Cup Rookie of the Year standings - 19 points behind third-place Paul Menard and 10 ahead of fifth-place A.J. Allmendinger - and second overall in the Busch Series standings heading into Ford Championship Weekend at Homestead. In the final edition of his Tampa Tribune rookie diary, Reutimann discusses how his results have measured up against his expectations:

For the most part, I don't feel like a Nextel Cup rookie anymore. All the stuff that was so unfamiliar at the beginning of the year, it's pretty much second nature now. At least I know where the bathrooms are at all the tracks. The next goal is to get familiar with where Victory Lane is at all the places. You've got to crawl before you can walk.

On the Busch side, I think we've had a pretty good year. We would like to have given Carl Edwards more of a run for the championship, but he got out to such a big lead it was tough to catch him. I felt like we could win some races and be in contention for the championship. We won at a race - at Memphis last month - and we've got second place in the points wrapped up. I'd say we reached most of the goals we set.

On the Nextel Cup side, though, I'd have to say we fell short of most of our goals. We wanted to qualify for every race, and we've made 25 of 35 heading into the finale. We wanted to get some top-10 finishes, and the closest we've come is a 13th at Richmond and a 15th at Michigan. We were close in some areas. I think we would have had some top-10s if some things hadn't happened, but you can always say that in racing.

But I'm proud of my guys. We've gotten better as the season has progressed, and that's something else that was a goal. No matter what happened, we wanted to see progress being made, and I feel like we've had that.

That said, we have had a few disappointments here in the last few weeks. We didn't qualify at Atlanta and Phoenix, and we had an engine failure early at Texas. We've had a lot of engine failures this year.

We've got a long way to go to catch up to the likes of Hendrick Motorsports. They've won more than half of the races this year, and they're so far out in front I can't even see them. Our goal at Michael Waltrip Racing is to become an organization like Hendrick or Joe Gibbs Racing or Richard Childress Racing. It's certainly something to aim for.

Tony Fabrizio

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