Reutimann ready for Loudon 300

David Reutimann, Michael Waltrip Racing Toyota

Photo by: Eric Gilbert

CORNELIUS, N.C. — The No. 00 Aaron’s Dream Machine driver David Reutimann has nine races remaining in 2011 to extend his streak of annual trips to victory lane. Reutimann won at Charlotte in May 2009 and at Chicagoland in July 2010. Beginning Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, crew chief Rodney Childers said he and Reutimann will race with a “heroes or zeros” attitude.

CHILDERS ON STRATEGY: “Michael (Waltrip) and I had a conversation recently and talked a little about that. We could care less about finishing 15th - now it’s all about just going out and trying to win the race. If we have to take some chances in order to do that and it doesn’t work out and we finish 30th – who cares? It’s all about trying to get into victory lane before the end of the year and not worry about points at all. If we can get a car in victory lane and learn some stuff on our chassis and suspension going into next year – that’s really what we need to do. We are going to take chances. We’re either going to be heroes or zeros - it’s all about winning at this point.”

RECENT RACES: “We’ve had good cars. We won the pole at Richmond and we were the fastest in first practice at Chicago. We’ve known all along that the guys in the fab shop have been building better cars, so it’s been up to us to get them right. Hopefully we can get our luck turned around too. We’ve had some really fast cars and been able to go out in practice and qualifying and show that. I think a lot of people in the garage are starting to notice that we’re getting things turned around and we’re going to be a contender before long.”

UPCOMING TRACKS: All of the racetracks coming up are really good tracks for us – places that we feel we can win a race. Hopefully we can do that. There is always a big star beside Texas on the calendar because we know we run so well there. There’s always a big star by Chicago because the No. 00 has run well there in the past. And, for me, there is always a star by Charlotte. Those places I know we can win. Dover we’ve been on and off. We’ve had some really good races there and then we’ve had some where we got off a little bit. Hopefully we can get everything right and do a good job. Kansas we’ve been good at every time, but we didn’t do all that well there in the spring but the track conditions were a lot different, much hotter than we’re used to since we normally go there in the fall and earlier this year it was very hot and summer conditions. I think Kansas in the fall will be much more like Chicago where we had a really good car.”