David Reutimann has one career Craftsman Truck Series victory. Credit: Autostock

10 Questions: Reutimann

David Reutimann is currently living the dream of an up-and-coming NASCAR driver, seriously contending for the Craftsman Truck Series championship while also riding a string of two consecutive top-10 finishes in the Busch Series.

For the third consecutive weekend, Reutimann will "do the double", but for the first time in that stretch the Truck and Busch Series compete at the same venue, The Milwaukee Mile.

Reutimann recently took a break to answer 10 questions not necessarily connected to his racing career.

1. What is at the bottom of your "honey-do" list?

	Inside the Numbers David Reutimann in the Craftsman Truck Series Year Races W T5 T10 2004 25 0 4 10 2005 25 1 6 9 2006 10 0 5 8 Totals 60 1 15 27 Free VideoA day's worth of news in 90 seconds

Reutimann: At the bottom? Taking out the garbage. My wife can lay the bag right in front of the door and I'll walk around it. I'm not too big into taking the garbage out.

When I was single [it didn't get too bad because] I kind of lived at home so it was taken care of [laughing].

2. What is your favorite outdoor activity?

Reutimann: I enjoy flying remote control planes and doing R/C cars -- stuff like that. I don't know if you can call it an 'activity' -- because it doesn't require me doing a whole lot. But I enjoy that.

I have my very first trainer [plane], which I'm pretty proud of because that means I never stuffed it in there very hard. I've got just a couple basic aerobatic planes; I can't even remember what they are.

They're nothing really fancy, or hand-built from the ground up. I always get nearly-ready-to-fly stuff and just finish 'em up like that. Lack of time is part of the issue there.

Even though they say building 'em is part of the fun, I want to fly 'em. And the other part of the deal is, if I stuff one in [to the ground] I don't want to think that I've got 80 hours into it, trying to get it finished.

I'm happy with putting four, five or six hours into it. But what people don't know about messing with R/C stuff is that it's very relaxing. You can be out there just trying new things and hanging out.

It's very tough to land, but most people already know that. But I find it pretty relaxing and enjoyable. You can get a couple buddies out there and you fly around -- you chase each other around the sky and stuff like that -- and you can have a lot of fun and not really hurt anybody.

3. What's the most embarrassing moment you'll own up to, either in or out of racing?

Reutimann: Oh, this is great. When I first started racing the Mini Stock division at East Bay Raceway [in Gibsonton, near Tampa, Fla.] I had an old helmet, and because it was a dirt track, we had tearoffs.

Well, I pulled off a tearoff and I pulled the whole face shield off the helmet. So I got covered up with mud and I couldn't see where I was going. The yellow flag came out and I wrecked a guy under yellow.

It destroyed my car and his, because I couldn't see and I was still wide-open. That was probably the worst, because it happened right on the front straightaway.

I'm running around there wide-open and trying to dig the mud out of my eyes so I could see, and I wrecked this guy. He was really upset because it really hurt his car.

My dad was mad at me -- in fact, I think everybody at the racetrack was mad at me that night. That was something I haven't ever forgotten.

4. Which show is "must see TV" for you?

Reutimann: I watch CSI, and that's pretty much it. That, and anything on SPEED is pretty much all I watch. Whether it's a car auction or motorcycle racing or anything like that -- I watch it.

5. Which athlete outside of racing do you most admire?

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Reutimann: Can they be retired? I like Lance Armstrong, just because of his whole story and what he went through to come back. So I like his deal.

There are a lot of cool guys. I've always liked John Elway and I got a chance to hang out with him at the Toyota Pro Celebrity Race in Long Beach. He's a guy I've always admired, so he and Lance are definitely at the top of my list.

6. If you could go back in time, what period in history would you like to live in, and why?

Reutimann: Probably the '60s, I guess. Probably somewhere in there, or whatever time -- my dad's 64, and I would like it to be back in my dad, Buzzie's era because all I hear is him talking about all the fun they had, with very little regulation.

It seems like he always had a good time and never got in trouble, so I guess that would be the '50s, right? [As Michael Waltrip Racing competition director Bobby Kennedy came through the truck] you'd know that more, Bobby, right -- that's closer to your era [Kennedy: 'Don't go there.'].

If he's 64, what era is that? I'll let you do the math on that, because I was never any good at it. But that would be the '50s, right? I guess he'd be a young man in the '50s -- so it would have been the '60s.

7. If you own an iPod, what's on that bad boy?

Reutimann: Yeah, I do. I've got everything on my iPod from Green Day to Johnny Cash. I listen to everything. Not really any country -- the closest thing to country is Johnny Cash, but I don't really go any more than that.

I've probably got about 180 songs on there. My mood doesn't have much to do with what I listen to. I always end up putting it on 'shuffle' and just listening to what comes up next.

8. What was your worst subject in high school?

Reutimann: Math, by a long shot. I struggled in Math from the time I showed up until the time I left. I think part of that was that I couldn't figure out how I was going to apply it -- how I was going to make it useful.

Another part of it was that I struggled with it and I got so aggravated with it that I just made up my mind that I hated it. So I just continued to hate it and made up my mind I was never going to learn it.

But I still struggle today, like, with counting down the years we just tried to do is the perfect example.

9. What were your first job, and your most vivid memory of it?

Reutimann: I've actually never really had a real job. I've raced my whole life. I worked in my dad's shop, and he just started paying me. I worked in my dad's race shop for a long time.

I just started getting a paycheck, which I never expected, so that was probably my first job. And you know, it's funny, when you consider the guys my dad raced with, I don't really have any good stories about them coming by the shop.

Guys used to come by the shop all the time, but they were always just passing through or stopping in for a quick visit -- and generally I was supposed to be doing something so I couldn't really hang out that much.

So I don't have a whole lot of memories from that.

10. What have you learned about yourself in the last year?

Reutimann: I've probably learned that I have the ability to be more patient than I ever thought I could be. And I think a lot of that has to do with having a four-year-old daughter, Emilia.

But she's been good for me, because she's taught me a lot of patience in general, which kind of runs through into your driving and everything else, so I think I'm much more patient than I ever thought I could possibly be.

And that's a big surprise to me -- it really is.