DAVID REUTIMANN
No. 00 Aaron’s Dream Machine Toyota
DOVER INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
CORNELIUS, N.C. — The No. 00 Aaron’s Dream Machine team races at Dover International Speedway on Sunday then travels across country for Tuesday’s all-important test at the newly configured Phoenix International Raceway. The test also marks the second time NASCAR Sprint Cup teams will run their new fuel injection engines that debut in 2012. Michael Waltrip Racing driver David Reutimann and Mike Skinner tested the EFI car at Kentucky in July.
Crew Chief Rodney Childers says late season tests like Phoenix as well as the Oct. 18 California Speedway tire test are key to 2012 success. With limited track time on race weekends, test sessions are where teams find much of the speed in their equipment. NASCAR’s announcement that Rockingham Speedway will host a truck race in 2012 means Charlotte-based teams will need to find an alternate test facility.
CHILDERS ON PHOENIX TESTING: “Testing EFI cars and having a open test for a new surface is a lot to squeeze into a couple test days. I got messing around with some setup stuff last night and the track is extremely different. Stuff that you ran there in the past isn’t going to work anymore. You’re going to get a ton of travel on the backstretch through that dogleg that you don’t get anywhere else and it’s going to be really hard to figure out how to keep the car from dragging on the backstretch and keep it as low as you can in turn three. It’s going to be an interesting two days out there. David (Reutimann) got to drive the EFI car a little bit in Kentucky and he didn’t seem to think that it drove a ton different. They worked on the fuel map and stuff like that trying to get that worked out. He thought it drove okay. We are taking another one out to Phoenix for this open test next week and hopefully he’ll get to drive it a little bit out there and learn a little bit about it to see how it drives there.”
LIFTING TEST BAN: “The thing that I’d like to see is maybe one intermediate track that you can go to say once a month or something like that. And maybe not each team, but maybe each organization can go. For instance if we wanted to go to Charlotte for a day we could do it once a month. It’s more to validate parts and stuff like that. It’s got to the point now that if you make a new chassis you can’t really go anywhere and test it before you go to the racetrack, so you just have to use the best tools that you have and believe in them when you take it to the track for the race. A lot of times we are just hoping it works the way we planned. At least if we could just go to a track that we race on and put miles on stuff to make sure that it’s the right thing to do before you go race it – that would be a big help.”
WHAT EFFECT DOES ROCKINGHAM GETTING A TRUCK RACE HAVE: “We used to use Rockingham for pretty much all of our engine stuff with TRD. We’d go put 500 miles on an engine there and get a better idea on some things. What we were hoping for is Nashville would have open time and we could go try things there. But now it’s looking like Nashville is going to be closed down all together, so it’s going to be tough. I don’t know as of right now exactly where we are going to go and how we are going to do it. Hopefully we can get something worked out.”
ADDITIONAL NOTES OF INTEREST
· Reutimann at Dover: In eight career NSCS starts at Dover, Reutimann has an average start of 15th, average finish of 20th and led 26 laps. Reutimann has one career pole (2009-1) and two career top five starts (both races in 2009). Reutimann started 17th and finished 15th in the spring race.
· National Lucky Dog Days: From Sept. 29 – Oct. 1, Aaron’s is hosting National Lucky Dog Days at all of it’s corporate and participating franchise stores. Great product specials, instant win prizes every day at every store – 99 prizes will be given away each day nationally. Visit your local Aaron’s store for details or visit www.Aarons.com/lucky
· Meet The Driver: Reutimann will sign autographs at the MWR merchandise display on Sunday at 10:20 a.m.
