Love, respect, pride and commitment are just a few of the labels that top the list when you're talking about a father and son -- and they certainly fit Nextel Cup and Busch driver David Reutimann and his father, short-track racing legend Emil "Buzzie" Reutimann.

To steal a cliché, they say the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree, and that's especially appropriate when talking about the Florida native Reutimanns, with David being a devoted family man and a third-generation racer.

Q: What would you guys consider to be your most nerve-wracking moment in racing?

Buzzie: A nerve-wracking moment in racing? How could there be such a thing?

David: I don't know about him, but for me it was standing on top of the trailer the other day trying to find out if we were in the race [Daytona 500] or not [on the day of the Gatorade Duel qualifying races]. That was by far my worst moment.

Buzzie: I tell you what's going to be worse. It's like when you're leading at Syracuse [New York State Fairgrounds 1-mile dirt track, home of a season ending Modified race that's considered the 'Daytona 500' of that racing genre] with three laps to go.

That's when you hear all kinds of things going wrong with your car.

David: I never led anything at Syracuse so I don't know anything about that. I do know they didn't have mirrors or radios to give them any clue who was catching them or biting on them.

Buzzie: You just never knew who was back there. And whenever you'd get a lead in a race like that -- especially something as big as that was -- you'd always hear something going wrong in the car.

It was either something here, or something there. That reminds me of a time when I was leading the Eastern States 200 [at Orange County Fair Speedway in Middletown, N.Y.] and I knew the right-rear was slick -- it was used-up.

I got the white flag and whew, I let out a sigh of relief. And then bam! The right-rear tire went flat. I beat 'em down the backstretch with a flat tire, but coming off the fourth corner I went from first to fifth -- in the last 100 feet.

So I think that could be considered nerve-wracking.

David: Especially when the welfare of your family depends on how you finish in that particular race, because those races were big paying races for an independent guy with no sponsorship.

Q: What's a moment when each of you was most proud of the other?

David: In the early days, like for his big victories at Syracuse and the Eastern States races, I was so young that I don't really hardly remember any of that.

But I think for me it was probably a couple years ago -- not more than two years ago -- down at East Bay Raceway [in Gibsonton, Fla., near Tampa] where he and I were in the same Modified race.

We were all racing in a pack, and I was running fourth or fifth and he was running second, racing hard and having a good time. He's working the guy, and working the guy and I'm watching him do what I've seen him do so many times before.

He was working the bottom of the racetrack and working the bottom of the racetrack and getting the guy to commit, thinking he's going to get passed on the bottom if he gets off the bottom.

And then with one to go, he drops by the guy and blows by him getting into [Turn] 3 and goes on to win the race. And I remember it because I saw him doing it, and I'm out there trying to race and at the same time I'm watching what he's doing.

And to see him still doing it at 65 years old -- the same things I saw him do as I was growing up -- and to do it as good as I've ever seen it done was probably one of the coolest moments for me.

I know I'm proud that he's won all of the big races that he's won, but a lot of them were a little early in my time to really remember all of that stuff.

Buzzie: I've never told David this -- I don't think I've ever told anybody this -- but one of my proudest moments with David was when we were at an All Pro banquet.

Before the banquet, the race director, Les Westerfield came up to David and said, 'The preacher can't be here to say the blessing before the banquet.' So they asked David to do it -- and that was a proud moment for me.

David: That was nerve-wracking. I remember that and I think I was more nervous doing that than I ever was getting into a racecar.

Buzzie: But there have been so many proud moments.

David: It's hard to single out just one, because there have been a lot of good ones.

Buzzie: The first time he ever won with his Mini Stock, at the Florida State Fairgrounds, was another one. And one of my proudest moments was when I first saw him drive his Mini Stock.

We'd finally got this little car done that we built -- a little four-cylinder Pontiac Sunbird -- working on it on Saturdays and Sundays. So we said, 'Here we go,' and we took him down to the Fairgrounds.

The track was all muddy and they were running it in, so my brother Wayne and I said we better walk down to the first corner and see how David does.

So pretty soon they drop the green flag to start practice and here he come down the front straightaway with that little old Pontiac just as wide open as it would go, and he thumped her off there into the first corner with the back end hung out and 'round the corner he went, just like he'd been doing it for a hundred years.

So I looked at Wayne and Wayne looked at me, and we didn't say nothing. We just walked back to our racecars. He knew how to do it and we didn't worry no more.

Q: Was there any choice for each of you guys but to go into racing because each of your dads raced and was successful at it?

Buzzie: It was just what we wanted to do. I guess some people like to golf, and some people like to fish. We just like to race.

My dad raced, and we just grew up around racetracks and tinkering with cars. My dad had a Chevrolet [dealership] and we had a junkyard out back, so we were always going out there and fixing something up, or siphoning the gas out of an old junk car to put it into something we had running, to get it going.

Of course, David's mom wanted him to be a doctor or a lawyer, but I don't think she had a chance on that.

David: I definitely had the option not to do it, but I never thought it was an option. It was just kind of a no-brainer for me and I felt it was what I wanted to do.

Q: What was the big attraction for you guys? Was it the sound, the smell, the color or what?

David: I can remember sitting in the stands and watching him win races and how people would cheer for him and react to him. The fact that he could give some little kid in a wheelchair a trophy after a feature win and just make the kid's day, I thought was pretty special.

I kind of identified right away that that was something that not everybody had the opportunity to do. But I've always just enjoyed the driving part, just you and the car and you're trying to make it do something it doesn't want to -- especially on the dirt tracks.

So part of it was that, but a large part of it was just that I loved to drive anything.

Buzzie: I think, back then, it was being able to put something together yourself -- to put it together and build something, because we used to get everything out of the junkyard and go out and win with it.

It would give you a greater feeling of accomplishment when you could do something like that.

Q: Did your wives fall in love with Mr. Reutimann, or Mr. Reutimann the racer?

Buzzie: We like to think it was because of us just being like we are.

David: But the thing about it is, I don't think that any of them were ever around when we weren't racing. In my case, when Lisa and I got married I had been racing for -- heck, [dad] was racing since he was 13, so I don't think there was ever a time that with the people you were around, you weren't the racer.

But there are also two different sides to every personality and sometimes me as the racer is not a lot of fun to be around at all. But I think that me as a person, a lot of the time, is a little more pleasant.

I think I can be tolerated a little bit better when I'm out of race mode as opposed to when I'm not.

Buzzie: I guess it's like Howard Cosell used to say, 'The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.' A lot of times when it's the thrill of victory, we're a lot easier to be around than in a defeat.

Q: If you weren't in racing, what do you think you'd be doing?

Buzzie: That's a hard question, because I don't think we know anything else.

David: I think both of us are good fabricators, so we could probably do something like be machinists. But I don't know. I think I'd be in trouble if I didn't race.

I think, for me, I'd be building racecars or chassis or doing stuff like that, because I ended up being pretty decent at it. But that was because [dad] was in the business already, so if he hadn't of been in the business to start with, I don't have a clue what I'd be doing.

Buzzie: It goes back so many years and I think it was just that we enjoyed building things, fabricating it and putting something together. We could build whole cars.

So it would have to be something where you could build something and then to see what you had accomplished after you were through.

David: I think that there's nothing more fulfilling than starting with just a rack of 22-foot length, inch-and-three-quarter .095 tubing or something and building a car, hanging the body and doing everything to it -- running the brake lines and wiring -- and then going out and racing it and winning with it, knowing that it was your creation.

That's definitely one of the fun parts of it.

Q: You guys got a fix on how many feature races you've won?

Buzzie: I had a friend of mine who'd come down to Florida each year and he'd get out all my old scrapbooks and have 'em all over the table and try to document how many I'd won.

And he come up with a deal I think that was close to 1,200 times that I'd won. Of course, I started when I was 13 years old so I drove in a lot of races.

I think at one time I won 20 in a row at Phillips Field in Tampa. No, they didn't put a bounty on me, but they used to try to beat me pretty regular.

David: I'm probably in the neighborhood of 212 or 215. I've got a pretty good ways to catch him, because he's about a thousand ahead of me.

Q: You know this is going somewhere, though. Buzzie, did you ever start the Daytona 500? And as you sit here on the morning of the Daytona 500, as a racing father and son, what does it mean to be on the verge of that?

Buzzie: No, I never started the 500, though I've run over here at the [Daytona] Speedway with my Modified. I came over here in 1964, I think it was, to watch a race.

I come out here on the infield and of course you couldn't see anything, anyway. It took us three hours to get out of here with the traffic. So I said, 'I'm never coming back to this place again.'

So here we are again, with the kid getting ready to start his first Daytona 500. So it's quite a range of emotions going, there.

Q: Did you ever sit, watching your dad in a race and say 'I don't know how he did that?'

David: Yeah, a lot. I've seen him do things in a car and you sit there and you're like -- you wish you could run it back on some kind of tape, so you could see what he did, or see how he did it.

But I think in his situation he'd always react so well. He was aggressive when he had to be but he was more of a calculating, smooth driver.

And that used to amaze me, because any time the track used to get black-slick and those guys would be out there hung out sideways, smoking the tires -- and he'd make 'em look like they'd never driven anything before.

To me, you had to have just raw talent and ability to do that -- to make the thing do something it wasn't going to do.

But I can't count the times I've sat in them stands or sat in the infield and turned around to somebody else and say, 'What was that? How did he do that?' I mean, it's cool because it's your old man out there putting the boot to somebody else and that's pretty cool.

Buzzie: We can go back to a time. A lot of people always thought we had high-dollar equipment. We didn't. We built most of our own stuff and a lot of times we built David's own motors out of spare parts we had laying around.

For instance, we could go to Ocala [Florida], where he probably won 20 or 25 features a year or something like that, and we knew there was cars there that were faster, but David could always get an extra ounce of speed out of his car and capitalize on the other guy's mistakes.

So I guess there's a lot of me involved in David. And it made me really proud to be able to watch David take something that we knew had less power and maybe some more used-up tires and to be able to beat those guys.

So I think he has a lot of talent, in doing that.

Q: Short-term, as both your careers continue, what are you most looking forward to this season?

Buzzie: Well, I think David should win the Daytona 500, but I guess we've got to face reality with his [lack of] experience. But I guess I'd love us to be a top-20 car before this year's over.

You don't want to set your expectations too high, but we always do the best we can with what we've got.

David: On my end, I'd love to make every race and to get up in the points to where we don't have to worry about making the show, while making steady improvement.

And for [dad], I think we're fixing to get him a new dirt car -- a Modified -- because he's about got his other one wore out. He told me this was probably the last car he'd ever have and I said, 'yeah, OK.'

That one made it three years and he's saying, 'my old car's getting pretty beat up.' And I said, 'yeah, I know Buzz, let's get you something else.'

I'd like to see him win some more races and race when he wants to race and enjoy it. So we'll get him a fresh piece so he can get out there and go back to winning races again.

He always loved it, but there was always a lot riding on it all the time -- the fact that he had a family to feed and stuff like that. Now I just want him to race, when he wants to and where he wants to.

If he doesn't want to race but once a year or if he doesn't want to race at all, he still has that option and I'm glad, because he deserves at least that much.

There's a lot of stuff he's done for me that took away from his own racing -- by a lot. He's let me drive stuff that he should have driven and now it's nice to go out there and see him race a little bit and have a lot of fun.

It still gives me something to bust on him about, when he doesn't win, and that's something I look forward to.