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You’re 41. You’ve got four NASCAR wins. You’ve worked for the same people for the most of the last decade. And now you’re out of a job with just three weeks until the end of the season. What do you do?

This is the question David Reutimann has to to answer right now. What does he do? He’s not young, he doesn’t have money or sponsorship to bring (that we know of) and he’s not miraculously going to be anything more than what he is. What you see is what you get.

Reutimann’s first foray into NASCAR came in 2002 with Joe Nemechek. After sporadic runs through that season and 2003, he was hired by Darrell Waltrip Motorsports. He eventually moved full time to the Cup and Nationwide Series with Michael Waltrip Racing in 2007.

During his time with the Waltrips, Reutimann has four wins, and points finishes of second and third in the Nationwide and Truck Series’. His best Cup season to date came in 2009 when he finished 16th in the points after one win, five top-fives and 1o top-10s.

Only Michael Waltrip has more wins in his equipment than Reutimann – and to date Reutimann can claim all two of the team’s Cup wins.

What’s more, this season he’s only a little worse than teammate Martin Truex Jr. – average of finish of 22.9 compared to 18.4 – and is four spots behind Truex in the points.

Reutimann’s release on Thursday was a stunning turn about. He had been granted a three year contract extension just last year and was a consistent force with the team. To his credit, Reutimann did a lot with sub-par equipment. Apparently it wasn’t good enough though.

The worst part of all of this is that Reutimann faces pretty bleak prospects on the market, especially given the timing. Teams are cutting back, have already filled spots or are only looking at drivers who are bringing something to the table. Like David Ragan, Reutimann will be hard pressed to find anything worth while or competitive, especially at the level he’s at now.

As they say, it’s not show friends, it’s show business. Thank you MWR for making that painfully clear.

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Before I really get into this post, I wanted to share a quote from Michael McDowell that he posted tonight on his Twitter page (@Mc_Driver).  McDowell has been driving the #55 for Prism Motorsports this season, and is one of the start-and-park crowd’s usual suspects.  There was some discussion about the reasons often given for why these teams fail to finish, which are usually bogus, and McDowell had a great response.

“They get mad at me when I tell them ‘I was going down the straight away and the funding fell off.’”

It was a bluntly honest comment from a good kid who is just trying to make it in racing, and I wanted to share.  Keep fighting McD…

Over the last few seasons, starting and parking has become a regular part of the sport.  Fewer teams and less available sponsorship dollars have contributed to the phenomenon.  Lately though, it seems that the number of teams doing it has increased in the Nationwide and Truck Series.  I believe it is a frightening trend, as most of these are victims of sponsorship losses.

Instead of trashing these teams though, I wanted to hopefully open up your eyes about the practice.  While there are certainly those teams out there who are doing it for nothing but the profit, for many, this isn’t exactly the case.

Lets picture for a moment that you are a NASCAR car owner.  Your team runs mid pack each week, but it’s a solid operation and it’s respectable.  Then something unforeseen happens and you lose your sponsorship.  Maybe you only had a partial deal, or maybe an agreement fell through.  And now, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t find a replacement.  What do you do?  You really only have two choices: shut down completely because of lack of funding; or trim down your staff and begin starting and parking until something comes along.

This exact scenario is what many are now starting to face.  Instead of putting entire shops of people out of work, owners are using the start-and-park startegy to weather the storm and keep the doors open until they can put money together.  It buys the owners more time to find sponsorship, and it keeps the employees’ paychecks coming on time.  Knowing that, it’s hard to really blame them for it.

Something else to consider is how this affects these owners and teams.  Remember that people get involved in racing because they want to compete.  They want to go out each weekend and try and be the best.  Starting and parking though, goes against the very idea of competition.  Pulling out of a race after only a few laps with a perfectly good race car is a very difficult thing to do.  Add on top of that the fact that most fans and NASCAR itself severely disapprove of the practice, and you begin to see how demoralizing it can be.

In a perfect world, we’d have 43+ fully funded teams showing up to the track each weekend to race the full distance.  But we don’t live in a perfect world.  In reality, the world is a very tough place to try and race.  I know for many of you, the simple mention of the phrase “start-and-park” gets your blood boiling.  Trust me, I understand.  It makes me sick to my stomach to watch these cars pull into the garage each weekend after a few laps. 

Do me a favor though?  Don’t forget that sometimes bad things happen to good people, and tough choices need to be made.  Not all of the start and parkers are the enemy.

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After the 2008 season, we decided to look back over the season and see how we did in terms of reporting on rumors and breaking some news.  In the end, we got eight correct, had two pushes, screwed one up, and had three rumors outstanding.  With 2009 behind us, I thought it would be fun to again do the same thing.  I’m going to start with the three bits we had outstanding, and then we’ll move into 2009.

Fastenal to RCR:  After the info we heard, we thought this one was in the books.  Even Jayski reported at one point that this was going to happen, even mentioning a driver lineup.  But in the end, Fastenal ended up at JR Motorsports for the ‘09 season.  Scratch this one.

Rule Changes Coming to the Truck Series:  NASCAR did indeed make changes to the Truck Series rules for 2009, and we were close.  We first reported they were only going to allow only four crew members over the wall and that they would initiate a hard card limit.  They did indeed limit both, but we missed the crew limit by one.  It was five members over the wall and not four.  I’m still giving us the point here.  Plus one for the Insiders.

BDR Employees Laid Off:  This indeed was true, and what was left of BDR was turned into Triad Racing Technologies.  TRT supplies teams with Toyota engines, chassis, and some other services.  Plus one for the Insiders.

First Crew Member Tests Positive: In my post following the Daytona 500, I let you know that I’d heard NASCAR had caught it’s first offender of the new substance abuse policy.  We found out a short time later that it was a Mayfield Motorsports employee, and he was suspended indefinitely from NASCAR.  It was strange foreshadowing for the summer to come and drug testing.  Plus one for the Insiders.

RMM Cuts Salaries: Early in the season, we heard that Randy Moss Motorsports had cut it’s employees salaries by as much as 35%.  While no official announcement was ever put out, this was indeed true.  The budget for the #5 Tundra for Mike Skinner was limited at best, which led to the cuts.  Plus one for the Insiders.

Trouble At Trail: 2009 was supposed to be the first season for minority owned Trail Motorsport.  But what started off with much fan fare and press, fizzled before it ever got started.  We first told you in April about the problems internally at Trail.  On it’s own, the team never fielded a race car at a Truck Series, Nationwide Series, or Cup Series event.  Plus one for the Insiders.

Kyle Busch, Team Owner in 2010: We were the first to tell you about Kyle Busch’s plans to start his own NASCAR team for the 2010 season.  In July, we reported that construction was ongoing on a new race shop for Kyle and that he, Johnny Benson, and Brian Ickler may drive for the new team.  Busch will indeed have a team in 2010, with two full time trucks.  One for himself and Brian Ickler, and another for Tayler Malsam.  If sponsorship can be found, Benson may run a third truck.  Plus one for the Insiders.

Parker Kligerman, Wyler Racing, & Michael McDowell: In September we told you that ARCA driver Parker Kligerman would run some NNS races for Penske, that Wyler Racing may be closing up shop, and that Michael McDowell would run at New Hampshire for Thorsport Racing.  Kligerman ended up running at Kansas and Homestead for Penske Racing.  Wyler did make it to the end of the season, but from what we know just barely.  As of today, there is no word on Wyler Racing’s 2010 plans.  And finally, McDowell did run at NHMS for Thorsport.  He ran the #98 truck, that was painted up like a police car.  We will call that plus two and minus one for the Insiders.

Your Favorite Team and a Funded Driver: While we did write a post mentioning a rumor, we wrote the post more as commentary then actually reporting the rumor.  The post itself was about John Wes Townley and his impending move to Richard Childress Racing.  Townley will indeed race for RCR in 2010, and will compete full time in the NNS in the #21 Zaxbys Chevrolet.  Since we didn’t call the driver out, nor did we get anything wrong, I’ll give us a push.

Rick Ren Gone from KHI: We told you before Homestead that Kevin Harvick Inc. crew chief Rick Ren was leaving at the end of the season, possibly to take a managerial role at Kyle Busch’s new team.  This rumor was actually denied publicly by Kevin Harvick, but in the end turned out to be true.  Ren will serve as the Director of Operations for KBM this season.  Plus one for the Insiders.

Eric Phillips to KBM: To add to this stout lineup for 2010, we were the first to tell you about Eric Phillips leaving Randy Moss Motorsports for Kyle Busch Motorsports.  Phillips will serve as crew chief for the #18 truck piloted by Busch and Brian Ickler for this season.  We were certainly all over the KBM stuff in ‘09.  Plus one for the Insiders.

Biffle and Baker Curb: And last but not least, after it was reported by SceneDaily.com that Baker Curb was working on a deal with a Cup driver for the 2010 NNS season, we told you that Cup driver was Greg Biffle.  Biffle will pilot the #27 Red Man Ford Fusion for Baker Curb this season in an undetermined number of races.  Plus one for the Insiders.

Looking back over all the rumors, I think we had another pretty good year.  We got eleven right, missed two calls, and had one push.  So over the last two years, that makes us 19-3-3 on the scoreboard.  We certainly don’t know it all or hear it all, and we also won’t report every rumor we hear.   But I think this shows that when you hear a rumor from TNI, odds are pretty good it’s true.  What do you think?