Conversation: Scott Wimmer

After winning four of the final eight NASCAR Busch Series races of the 2002 season, Scott Wimmer established himself as one of the favorites for the 2003 championship.

But no one could have foreseen that the departure of crew chief "Bootie" Barker would reveal how much he had meant to Wimmer's team at Bill Davis Racing.

On his way to Indianapolis last week, Wimmer took time to chat with NASCAR.com's Dave Rodman about the importance of his first win with crew chief Chris Rice, moving to the Winston Cup Series and his impending wedding.

Q: How much of a sigh of relief did you finally breathe after you won at Pikes Peak -- especially with the way you ran at the end of last year?

SCOTT WIMMER  •  Driver Page  •  2003 stats  •  Bill Davis team page  •  Sluggish start doesn't faze optimistic Wimmer

Scott Wimmer: It was a big relief. Everybody on the team was wondering when that first win was gonna come and nobody thought it was gonna take this long. We thought we would be winning races right off the bat, and to be in contention for a championship. Things just didn't work out that way. It ended up taking a lot longer until we were able to get into Victory Lane at Pikes Peak.

Q: How much progress do you feel like you and Chris have made, particularly with how tight you and Bootie were at the end of last season?

Scott Wimmer: At the beginning of the year I thought we were running real well, but we had a lot of wrecks and just got real far behind in the points. Then we kind of lost everything. We were short on cars and I was frustrated and Chris was frustrated.

It just took us this long to get built back up to where we are, now, with the cars that we like and the bodies right and our communication right. I'm just really excited going into these last 12 or 13 races knowing that Chris knows what I want in a race car, now and I know how to tell him what I want.

It's exciting for me, once you start running well. You can see yourself doing that every week and I think that's what we're most excited about now. We've got the confidence now, that we can do it.

Q: With the competition that you've seen this year, is it reasonable or feasible that you guys could have the kind of finish you did a year ago, closing out four-for-eight?

Scott Wimmer: I think it's going to be tough. We've got a lot of good Winston Cup drivers racing in the Busch Series now. They always come with the best equipment and the best crews and usually run very well. But I think we have a team that's capable of doing it.

	Wimmer currently sits seventh in the Busch Series. Credit Autostock

We've got most of the same crewmembers as last year and I think we've got the cars capable of doing it, now. It's just up to us to kind of raise the level of performance up a little bit. I think we need to have better pit stops than everybody else and we need to have better cars than every body else, and I think we could win four or five of the last eight like we did last year and maybe contend for the championship, too.

Q: How special was it to win the race at Pikes Peak and to be able to dedicate it to some special people?

Scott Wimmer: It was real special. This off-season was probably the hardest off-season I've ever had in my life. I lost my best friend in a snowmobile racing accident in January and then my brother, Tim, was seriously injured in a construction accident in June.

It was a hard time for me and my family, traveling back home and seeing my brother and trying to go and do my job every weekend in the race car, when he was going through countless surgeries and a lot of real touch-and-go situations to get himself better.

Fortunately he's going to be fine. He's going to have a lot of rehab to do, but he's doing great and he's going to come out of it as strong as he was before. I'm glad I could get the win for my best friend Flip and my brother, who's in a lot of pain right now.

Q: Your younger brother Chris is following in your footsteps and racing in the American Speed Association. How much time have you been able to spend with him, and how is his season going?

Scott Wimmer: I try to spend as much time as I can with him. The time gets a little bit more limited, the longer the season goes on. I'm always trying to help him out with shocks or anything that I can help him with on the car, set-ups and things like that.

His season is going all right. It's not as great as we planned, but he's had a lot of mechanical failures that we need to work on to get a little better. He's shown a lot of potential and has had a bunch of top-10s. It's been a real successful season so far for him.

Q: Having raced all the race tracks he's visiting and going to as many tracks as you have in the Busch Series, is that some insight you can offer him that might help him?

Scott Wimmer: It definitely helps him. He can go back and look at what I ran there for set-ups, and in the races how many times I pitted, how many tires we took and things like that. We're real fortunate that a lot of ASA drivers are moving up into the NASCAR Busch Series, like Joey Clanton and Johnny Sauter.

I'm real fortunate on any Saturday to be able to go up to those guys and ask them about set-ups for different tracks, so I definitely can help Chris out a lot with that information, from people I know and places I've been. One of the things we try to do quite a bit is to talk about tracks he's going to and what problems I had there, and what we can do to fix problems he might have.

Q: You're at the Bill Davis Racing shops a lot. How do you keep busy when you're there?

Scott Wimmer: I do a lot of different things. I usually try to work out with the guys and do pit stop practice with them. They've kind of kicked me out of working on the cars. They all have their jobs over there and I more or less get in the way, but I do a lot of different things.

I try to come up with different set-ups and talk to Chris a lot about that. You might find me building something for my little brother and his ASA cars, or something for my house. I just enjoy being with the guys and spending time with them away from the race track.

Q: When you get to be a driver at the level you're at, you don't get to touch the cars like you did coming up through the ranks. Do you miss that aspect of racing?

Scott Wimmer: Yeah, I really miss that. It's something I've done ever since I started, building my own race cars from the ground up. I did everything imaginable on them, and now I pretty much just show up at the race track and sit in them.

It's something I miss. Fortunately, I could go down and help my little brother out with his stuff and work on his cars a little bit -- just kind of get my hands dirty again. It's something I always enjoyed doing and I think I always will enjoy getting in there and build something and have a lot of fun with it.

Q: Obviously your career is moving towards the Winston Cup Series. Is Bill Davis going to get you in any Cup races this fall?

Scott Wimmer: We do plan some races and it will pretty much be with the same team I have right now. We're planning on running anywhere from five to seven Cup races. The first one we're definitely planning to do is Bristol. After that, I'm not sure. I think it mostly depends on the right sponsorship dollars, which is the key to making race teams go these days.

We're fortunate in that we have a great sponsor in the Busch Series, in Stacker 2, but we're looking to move up. I'd like to see our whole team move up, and hopefully we can do that. This season in the Busch Series is going to be good for us, and hopefully we can find that right sponsor to move up with.

Q: You've got a big event coming up in the off-season. How are the wedding plans coming together for you and Jody? Is that a good escape for you?

Scott Wimmer: I'm pretty fortunate (laughing) -- Jody has been taking care of most of it. I'm sure some of my duties are going to be coming up here, pretty quick. I'm pretty excited about that.

We're getting married in Las Vegas. It will just be a small family wedding. We're taking our families out there and have a little vacation for three or four days, and just try to have a lot of fun. Both my family and her family are busy.

My brother's racing and her brothers race. They have kids and things like that, so it will be nice to get away and have a little vacation out of it. As far as my part in the planning, it's been pretty easy. She's been handling most of the arrangements and getting everything put into place, so I'm pretty lucky in that aspect.

Q: It seems like racing takes up a lot of your time. What would the ultimate escape be for you and Jody?

Scott Wimmer: The thing that I love to do, away from racing, is to get out into nature, and do some hunting or hiking, things of that aspect. Being from Wisconsin, I've grown up hunting and fishing and doing all those things, and I just love to be outdoors.

I just love to go out in the quiet, and listen to nature. It's something we both really enjoy, to get out and get away from the cell phones and TV and just enjoy ourselves for however long we can.