Reutimann makes race at Waltrip's expense again

MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- David Reutimann sat in his garage stall, his head down, his voice low. When teammate Dale Jarrett came over offering a congratulatory handshake, he managed a wan, almost embarrassed smile. He hardly looked like a driver overjoyed to have made a Nextel Cup event.

With good reason. Reutimann qualified for Sunday's race at Martinsville Speedway, but had to bump his boss to do it. The driver of the No. 00 car at Michael Waltrip Racing snapped a one-week dry spell by becoming the final man to make the Goody's Cool Orange 500, but he did it at the expense of Waltrip, who's now missed every race since the season opener at Daytona.

"You know, Michael Waltrip has done a lot for me," Reutimann said Friday. "I just have a hard time getting really pumped up about the fact that he missed out on the show [Friday], and we didn't. I'm very excited, because that's what we're supposed to do. It's bittersweet, it really is."

And it's happened before. At California Speedway the second week of the season, Waltrip was in the field until Reutimann, the last of the drivers needing to make the race on speed, knocked him out. On Friday at Martinsville, the opposite scenario loomed -- Waltrip was the next-to-last driver to roll out, with only top-35 driver David Ragan behind him. The boss seemed to like his chances earlier in the day, after posting the 32nd-fastest time of the 49 drivers in practice.

"I thought, 'Here's where he pays me back for California,'" Reutimann said. "It didn't turn out that way."

Waltrip's best lap was about four-hundredths of a second too slow to make the show, and his beleaguered crew starting packing up early for the fifth consecutive week. Within camp Camry there were small signs of progress -- for the second consecutive Friday, Jarrett made the race on time, and five of seven Toyotas made the show. Toyota drivers Jeremy Mayfield and A.J. Allmendinger, seven days ago 0-for-the-season, are each now two for their last two.

Meanwhile, Waltrip soldiers on.

"When he leaves here, he knows he's still got an organization to run, and that's what he does," Reutimann said. "He looks at it across the board and tries to make it all a lot better. He wants what's best for our organization, and us making races and giving good feedback is best or our organization."

And giving feedback requires more than just making the race. The Waltrip organization has been behind in so many areas, from getting its facility finished to getting cars built on time. But all those DNFs means the team is also short on information, something only seat time on Sunday can provide.

"Making races is good, but we can't go out there and run around 42nd and 43rd, either. We have to try to advance and make gains," Reutimann said. "We still have a lot of work to do, and everybody knows that. Making races is part of the plan to try to get better.

"Fortunately, we're able to do that. I'm blessed. I had some heavy-duty praying going on there, and I'm just blessed to be in the show. We'll just try to make the most of it on Sunday."