Though this week's Daytona 500 drivers may be rich and successful now, none of them reached NASCAR's Super Bowl without some bumps along the way. We asked several drivers to share the story of a difficult moment with us. Up next: David Reutimann.
David Reutimann’s Road To The 2011 Daytona 500
One of the great NASCAR success stories in recent years has to be David Reutimann. After fighting to reach the highest levels of racing for his entire life, Reutimann finally made it to the Sprint Cup Series in 2007 – at the age of 37.
We’ll let him talk about the good ol’ days in his own words:
It starts with having all volunteer guys on your team and going to races that you really can't afford to go to, and having to rely on running well to get back home.
I operated for years when I had my own (cars) just by going to the racetrack, buying tires, writing a check that had no money in the bank to cover whatsoever, winning the race and getting up early Monday morning to go to the bank and be there with the money so the checks wouldn't bounce.
I never bounced a check, but I was dang close. Thankfully, the ladies at the bank would call me Monday morning and say, 'You comin' in this morning?' 'Yes ma'am! I'm on my way!'
That was the way I operated – and it's not the way to operate. But it was the only way I could, because I didn't have any money.
Putting seven guys in a motel room because you could only afford one – and you can't really afford that one. Sleeping in rest areas. Getting up and driving to a racetrack, racing all day and then driving 12 hours home after the race because that's just what you did.
That's racing. That was life, and that was my life. I did it every weekend, and I really didn't care – because I was racing.
When you rely on racing for your income, you don't race all year. So you've got to ride around. I ended up working for UPS a little bit as a jumper for $8 an hour and doing things like that just so I could make it through the offseason. The whole time, I'd be rebuilding my race cars and going to do it all again.
That was just the way I did it. And if I hadn't gotten the opportunity I had (at Michael Waltrip Racing), I'd still be doing the same thing. I don't think I would have changed anything.
That's not the right way to operate your business, but when you don't have any money...I don't know what I thought I'd do if I didn't run good that night and (win) the money back, but my dad always told me that if you've got a Plan B, you're planning for your Plan A to fail.
I just loved the sport and wanted to get to the next level. I figured it was 'Out of sight, out of mind.' If we were running well and winning races, I figured at some point maybe somebody would give me the opportunity to do something different so I wouldn't have to do what I was doing.
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