David Reutimann was at Martinsville Speedway on Tuesday and met with the media _ the first time he's talked to the media since Sunday's race when he retaliated and ran into Kyle Busch after Busch got into him earlier in the race.
There's been a lot of talk about if what Reutimann did was right since he's not racing for the championship. Even Kyle questioned Reutimann's action in the race since it could impact Kyle's title hopes. Kyle said he would have been fine if Reutimann exacted his revenge in any of the first 26 races next year.
Reutimman took several questions about Sunday's incident from the media and answered each question. Here's what he said:
QUESTION: How would you explain to your 8-year-old daughter about what happened with you and Kyle at Kansas and how you reacted?
DAVID: “That’s a good question. I would say that what happened … It’s something that I’m not very proud of, the way things went down. It’s not the way you should do things. It’s not the way you want things to go. So I would encourage people, if they have a choice, between doing something or not, I would say not would be a good answer. Sometimes in life there comes a time when you’ve got to stand your ground and sometimes you have to do what, at the time, you know is not right and you look back and you may could have done things differently, but in the end you sometimes have to stand up and do what’s right by you. It’s a slippery slope because if you’re talking to a child, you’re trying to project the right way to do things, you also have to explain that’s that is not the way you want things to be done but sometimes you’re backed into a corner and you don’t’ have a choice.’’
QUESTION: Is it a good analogy that there is a bully on the playground (referring to Kyle).
DAVID: “That’s probably a little bit far fetched. There comes a time … it’s a situation where things have gone far enough and you have to do a little soemting about it and ideally it’s not what you’d like to do. Sometimes you don’t have a choice.’’
QUESTION: Have you and Kyle talked since the Knasas incident?
DAVID: “We haven’t talked, but Kyle and I don’t talk. We did talk before and we probably won’t talk after. I have nothing against Kyle, we just don’t. I wouldn’t think that would change at anytime. It’s not ideally how you would want to go with two Toyotas making contact on the race track at the same time. I hate it for the organizations. I hate it for Joe Gibbs Racing, J.D. and all those guys and all the guys on the 18 team. They go through a lot of work to build good race cars and so do my guys. You hate to see things come down to that.
QUESTION: After what happened at Bristol and first incident at Kansas and what your crew chief said on the radio, did you feel you had to take action?
DAVID: “Not really. I’d like to set a few things straight: Number 1: The only thing I had a problem with at Bristol was just some of the stuff said after the race (when Kyle said the difference between him winning and Reutimann placing 2nd that night was who was behind the wheel). As far as on the race track, there was no problem at all. We got together a little bit, but that was racing. That’s racing at Bristol. There’s no problems at all there. So that didn’t have anything to do with it. Some of the stuff he said, in the end, is really not a big deal. It aggravates you a little bit at the time but you move on. If you’re talking about something Rodney (Childers, his crew chief) said on the radio during the course of the race, he didn’t tell me to go do anything. I’m driving the car. I’m responsible for what happens to the car. I don’t care who you are, I’m going to do what I’m going to do inside the race car no matter what who’s telling what. I’m responsible for that. I wasn’t out there riding around. I was trying to get the best finish I possibly could for the day and things just ended up happening and it ended up being unfortunate for everybody involved.’’
