There’s a line from a great old song by the Carpenters that goes “rainy days and Mondays always bring me down.” Tell that to David Reutimann and he’ll laugh at you. It was his car that was sitting in the front of the line when NASCAR pulled the plug on the Mother Nature 600, following two days of rain, at the Lowes Motor Speedway.
The Coca Cola 600 is NASCAR’s longest race on their schedule. Under the best of normal conditions it takes approximately four and one half hours to run the 600 miles/400 laps. In direct comparison the rain soaked Mother Nature 600 took 12 hours and 40 minutes to run 227 laps before NASCAR officials finally declared that the race was over.
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Also during the Memorial Day weekend we were treated to a sorely missed Tony Stewart tirade and we were treated to another episode of the Dale Jr-Tony Jr soap opera. With those thoughts in mind let’s begin with:
HOORAH to David Reutimann and his first ever NASCAR Sprint Cup victory. He was the first to say that “it certainly wasn’t the prettiest win but somebody had to win this thing.” Reutimann only led five laps of the race with all of them being yellow caution flag laps due to rain. Then he had to stand around, for what must have seemed like an eternity, waiting to see what the weather was going to do.
HOORAH to crew chief Rodney Childers for making the gutsy call that kept his driver on the track during what turned out to be the final yellow and red flag that concluded the race. All of the leaders came onto pit road for tires and fuel when that final yellow flag appeared. It was a sheer note of irony that allowed the Reutimann team to stay out on the track. They were pitting out of sequence with the other teams due to the fact that Reutimann hit the wall earlier in the race. Childers told his driver “we’re either going to win this thing due to rain or we’re going to finish 24th.”
HOORAH to Michael Waltrip Racing for getting their first team win. Hopefully that will lead to a momentum boost for an operation that is already beginning to show signs of improvement.
WAZZUP with all of that rain in North Carolina during Memorial Day weekend? Everyone knows that, during this time of the year, the rain is supposed to be located in Indianapolis-Indiana so Mother Nature can wreak havoc on the Indy 500 weekend.
HOORAH for Tony Stewart for treating the fans and the media to a sorely missed display of “Tony The Terrible.” It seems that team ownership has mellowed Stewart a bit this year and we’ve all been deprived of his famous candid barbs.
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But Stewart delivered during the Monday portion of the race. He was unhappy with Reutimann driving so aggressively at such an early point in the event. Stewart came over his radio and said “Somebody needs to tell him that this isn’t the Nationwide Series. If he keeps racing me like this I promise that he’ll beat the traffic on the way home.”
When another rain delay red flag came out, and the cars were parked on pit road, Stewart made it a point to express his displeasure to Reutimann in person. Stewart reminded Reutimann that this was not a Nationwide Series race, where the events are considerably shorter in distance, and he didn’t need to be that aggressive so early in the race when there were still over 400 miles left to run.
