NASCAR Cup Series

Reutimann gets his due with 2nd career win

Published Jul. 11, 2010 6:20 a.m. ET

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David Reutimann received the vindication he’s been waiting for on Saturday night.

“No rain tonight boys,” Reutimann said after taking the checkered flag at Chicagoland Speedway.

He was referring to his first Cup win in the rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600 last year.

While a win is a win, Reutimann -- and the rest of the No. 00 team -- took a lot of ribbing due to the conditions of their first victory. The race was called after 227 of 400 laps.

Ty Norris, GM for Michael Waltrip Racing, said in all of his years of racing he’s “probably not seen anyone have to walk around for a year and a half having to apologize for winning a race.”

Reutimann need not apologize again. There was no denying his skill on Saturday, the talent of his team or the quality of his car. Everything lined up for the 40-year-old, third generation racer who qualified seventh and led three times for a total of 52 laps.

As third-place finisher Jeff Gordon remarked over the radio about Reutimann after the No. 00 Toyota blew by him on lap 213, “I'll tell you, he's pretty damn good. He's a (freaking) rocket."

Despite losing the lead when he pitted on Lap 232, Reutimann regained the point on Lap 235 for the final 32 laps. Carl Edwards, Gordon, Clint Bowyer and polesitter Jamie McMurray rounded out the top five.

“We earned this one,” Reutimann said. “Nobody gave it to us and that feels really good. It was a total team effort.

“I heard so much stuff for winning a rain-shortened event that everybody said we didn’t earn it.”

Reutimann realized when Edwards and Gordon both visited him in Victory Lane that he indeed earned the recognition from his peers.

Edwards, who scored his best finish of the season and his first top-five since May, said Reutimann “is just such a nice person.”

“He is the first guy to congratulate me on something and the first guy to apologize if he feels he did something wrong,” Edwards said. “We all have to hang out with each other every week, but he is the guy you would hang out with if you had an off weekend. He is a good guy.”

Gordon joked that he stopped congratulating his fellow competitors “after three or four wins.” But he admitted that “David is a neat guy,” and knew how much the victory meant to Reutimann.

“That win that he had in Charlotte, while he took it, not going to throw away the trophy, earning it the way he earned it tonight is the way he wants to do it,” Gordon said. “They've been close at times, just haven't had all the breaks.

“I think that he just drove a great race and had a good race car. I think he deserves to be congratulated.”

Reutimann’s first career Cup win occurred in his 75th start. His second win came 42 races later. Reutimann earned 190 points for each race, but somehow the second seems much sweeter.

“I felt there was a cloud over (the first win) — no pun intended,” Reutimann said. “But a dark cloud hanging over our head with that win at the 600. Everybody says, ‘Yeah, you guys won, but. (Crew chief) Rodney Childers won me that race. He made the right calls. He won me the race tonight. We win and lose as a team.

“Now I’m just wondering like, ‘OK, here you go. Just leave me alone. We won the race. We did a good job, Everybody did a good job. Everybody around me worked together to get us where we are.”

On Saturday night, that was Victory Lane. And no one can take that away from David Reutimann.

The points leader stumbles

Kevin Harvick has led the points for the last 10 races due to the consistency of his performances.

But the No. 29 team missed the setup for the start of the race and problems were compounded by a faulty fuel pump. Although the team attempted to make repairs, Harvick inevitably ended up in the garage on Lap 191.

"We had to go to the garage to repair the fuel pump assembly, so that ended our chance at salvaging a good finish,” Harvick said. “We were just extremely loose for most of the race. Tough night for us, but we have a strong race team and we will bounce back at Indy."

Although Harvick finished the race, he was scored 34th, 16 laps down. With Gordon’s third-place finish in the race, he gained 109 points on Harvick and currently trails the No. 20 Chevrolet by 103 points.

Not Daddy-J's night

Jimmie Johnson looked like he had the car to beat in the early stages of the race Saturday night, leading the first 92 laps. But then his trouble started.

Johnson had a 2.2-second lead but nearly lost control of his car entering pit road on Lap 93 and had to complete a full circuit before attempting to pit again.

"Well, coming to pit road I hit the brakes to slow down and the car had a lot of rear brake percentage in it that I didn't expect it to have,” Johnson said. “It didn't have that in my practice runs when I was trying to get to pit road. I just didn't expect the car to try to rotate around on the brakes coming to pit road like it did and I almost spun out so I missed pit road that time.”

Johnson cycled back to third place on Lap 105 and was back to second three laps later.

Unfortunately for him, more problems were coming.

First Johnson made contact with Martin Truex Jr. coming down the backstretch on Lap 137 which forced the No. 48 to the pits. He restarted 24th on Lap 141 but slid up into the wall on Lap 169 and was forced to pit again.

“We were coming through the field and I felt like we could still salvage a top five or something and I cut a right front tire down and then just got in the wall. I think between sliding through the grass and touching the wall, it messed up the body and the nose started dragging pretty bad for the final run or two."

Johnson finished 25th, one lap down. Combined with his fourth DNF of the season last week at Daytona, the four-time champ is currently 188 points behind leader Kevin Harvick.

Numbers game

Say what?

While Jeff Gordon was running second, his spotter Shannon McGlamery informed him: “The 16 is down a cylinder.”

Gordon replied, “The 34 is down a driver.”

When asked for clarification after the race, he added, “I said the 34, he hasn’t been there all year.”

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