Waltrip trying to leave wreckage of 2007 behind

Michael Waltrip doesn't call it a race shop, but a race world, and the place certainly looks the part. From the neon tower outside to the video displays, informational graphics and viewing platforms within, the two-time Daytona 500 champion has carved a veritable automotive fantasyland out of his little corner of the North Carolina piedmont. It's come a long way in a relatively short time; just a year ago, the facility was nothing more than a grandiose plan hidden amongst so much rubble and dust.

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The same could be said for the man himself. Waltrip almost giddily guides visitors through his complex, up a flight of stairs and to a balcony overlooking the main shop floor. He's clearly proud of the place, as he should be. For a $15 admission price, visitors get a much more in-depth look at the car construction and setup processes than they do at most other race shops. But no one seems to get more out of it than the car owner himself, who among all those shiny displays and all that Toyota equipment, looks like a man reborn.

"I really believed that we could do it," Waltrip said. "I really believed that our philosophy and what we have built as an organization could survive. Now, we might have had to take a different path than we first anticipated, but we could survive."

That's what Waltrip did through much of his 2007 season -- survive. Now, ensconced in his new environs and surrounded by a bolstered staff, he talks as if he knew he'd make it all along. He may have. But there were more than enough dark moments that would have made any reasonable man doubt, from the illegal fuel scandal that cast a pall over his Daytona 500, to all those missed races, to all those questions about whether he could hold on to his sponsors, or his manufacturer support, or even his race team. He lost 100 points and $100,000 for the infraction discovered during Speedweeks. He failed to qualify for 21 of 34 starts. He watched his other drivers, David Reutimann and Dale Jarrett, struggle just as mightily.

He even crashed his personal car one night when he fell asleep behind the wheel. How much could one man take?

"There were always people, faces that I would see that would make it seem like it was going to be all right. My brother [Darrell], who just wanted to give me a hug, who had a team that didn't succeed, had days at the racetrack when he didn't understand why things went the way they did. His presence was important to me. My momma, who loved me more when I was doing bad than she ever could have when I was doing good, because she knew I needed it worse. She was special to me," Waltrip said.

"Just employees, people who worked here who said, 'Come on now, this is bad, but we're going to be OK.' And I never lost faith. I believed they were right, that it was all going to be just fine. It feels better right now. It's easy for people to say we haven't run a race yet, but I promise this, and I challenge anyone to argue it: From the time the last race at Homestead ended to where we are today, we would have won that race. We've accomplished more during that period of time. Now granted, it's graded on a curve. We have more to accomplish than most organizations."

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In retrospect, it seems as if Waltrip embarked on his Cup ownership career before his organization was ready for prime time. He had drivers and cars in 2007, but not much else. His shop wasn't finished. He didn't have many executives, or as he would later learn, enough capital. When there was a decision to be made, it was usually decided upon by Waltrip and vice president Ty Norris.

"If there was a meeting going on about anything, me and Ty were in it," Waltrip said. "If it was about travel, we were in it. If it was about construction, we were in it. If it was about engineering, we were in it. Because we were the only two here. We were the main people running the meetings. Now, today, there are meetings going on simultaneously in many different offices."

He has Rob Kauffman to thank for it. A car nut and hedge fund billionaire who lives in London, Kauffman bought a 50 percent share of Michael Waltrip Racing in October, providing his new business partner with capital he needed to improve his operation. But Kauffman's involvement carried the stipulation of managerial depth, and prompted the hiring of a chief financial officer, the installation of former NASCAR team owner Cal Wells as Kauffman's eyes and ears on the ground, and the eventual addition of Eric Warren as technical director. There's also a reinforced engineering department that Waltrip said helps the team get more out of its testing.

That much was evident during the recent sessions at Daytona International Speedway, where Waltrip and Jarrett were both near the top of the speed charts. Daytona made Waltrip, as the place where he snapped his epic winless streak and recorded the two victories that define his driving career. But it also brought him a level of infamy he's still trying to live down, in the form of the illegal accelerant found last year in the fuel system of his No. 55 car. Crew chief David Hyder, who was eventually fired, took the fall. The aftereffects of that episode, and the 100-point penalty that caused Waltrip to miss so many races, are still being felt -- he's struggling to find full-time sponsorship for Michael McDowell's Sprint Cup car and Josh Wise's Nationwide ride, partly because corporations only know the MWR they saw last year.

"It's just sad," Waltrip said, looking back at the incident. "I felt like I was disrespected, and it made me mad. It was difficult to deal with. I felt I left good direction, and people knew what to do and how to act, and they didn't choose to do so. I can't do anything about it. It's sad. Other people made mistakes, too. I made mistakes. But I would have never signed off on that one."

In true Waltrip fashion, he persevered, jumping into Reutimann's backup car and racing his way into the 500 through his 150-mile qualifying event. This year, he's better prepared. His team is clearly more organized. His facility is complete. His cars showed slight improvement at the end of last season, and were fast in testing. Now all that's left is for Waltrip to show results on the racetrack, and leave the near-ruinous events of 2007 behind.

"I closed that chapter on Thursday afternoon last year when I got into a car that I'd never practiced, the first time I'd ever raced in a Toyota, and I drove from last without a starting position to race for the lead and make the Daytona 500," he said. "I didn't feel like I had anything I needed to prove at Daytona. I didn't feel like I owed anyone any explanations after that. Now, I walked around for months after that thinking, why did that happen that way? But that was more just soul searching and trying to not let what could have been determined a catastrophic event mess my brain up. But no, I'm good. I'm going to Daytona to win, I'm not going down there to prove that I have to have something weird going on to make that happen."