WEST ALLIS, Wis. — David Stremme decided the only way to rebuild his racing reputation was to throw his career into reverse.
After losing his Sprint Cup ride at the end of last season, Stremme turned down other opportunities to drive in NASCAR’s top series in 2008. Instead, he’s racing for Rusty Wallace’s team in the second-tier Nationwide series. And it just might pay off.
Teams are noticing Stremme’s recent string of strong finishes, and he already is working on potential deals to return to Sprint Cup.
“A lot of people are talking, and we’ll see what happens on the Cup side of things,” Stremme said. “I feel very confident that I’ll be back in the Cup series next year.”
Stremme was considered one of NASCAR’s top up-and-coming talents when he made the jump to Cup full-time in 2006. But he found himself out of a job late last season when team owner Chip Ganassi hired Indianapolis 500 winner Dario Franchitti to replace him in the No. 40 car in 2008.
The move was tough for Stremme to take.
He finished a disappointing 24th in the points last season, but notes that teammates Juan Pablo Montoya and Reed Sorenson didn’t fare much better — making Stremme suspect that he took the fall for organization-wide performance problems that have continued this season.
“I just think there’s more than just one problem,” Stremme said. “There’s a lot of problems there. And I have a lot of friends there still, because I was there for a long time. But it’s just something (where) we went different directions and I think it’s going to help me.”
Adding to Stremme’s frustration was his belief that Ganassi had a deal in place with Franchitti last August but waited until September to tell him.
“It took me away from getting a couple other good rides, and I wasn’t happy about that,” Stremme said.
Stremme said he is grateful to Ganassi for bringing him to NASCAR, and the two remain friends. But in April, when his old team asked him to fill in at Talladega after Franchitti was injured, Stremme thought it was odd that team co-owner Felix Sabates called to thank him afterward but he didn’t hear anything from Ganassi.
Especially since Stremme led the race twice before getting caught up in a wreck.
“That’s the best that car’s run all year, and I figured I’d at least get a phone call,” he said.
Ganassi understands Stremme’s frustration.
“David knows how I feel about him personally,” Ganassi said. “Unfortunately, the business decisions of sports can be rather tough. David found himself on the receiving end of one of those business decisions. It’s sometimes difficult to hear when an organization choses someone else over you — I get that. I wish David nothing but the best.”
Stremme said his experiences driving for Wallace and working as a test driver for Roger Penske’s Cup team — a deal that could turn into a full-time ride next season — have given him a taste of what he wants.
“With Roger Penske, I’m testing with him, I talk to him, we sit down, we discuss things,” Stremme said. “Same with Rusty, you can talk to him. And that’s a little different on Chip’s program, and I think he’s just got a lot going on.”
After learning he was out of a ride, Stremme said he spoke to three Cup teams but didn’t consider any of them competitive enough. So he signed with Wallace, who agreed to field a second car along with the one driven by his son, Steve.
Stremme said his goal was to “to get into the best situation that I can to kind of get my stock back up.”
After some growing pains with his new team, Stremme has finished sixth or better in five of the series’ last eight races, including second-place finishes at Talladega and Nashville.
“As good as he’s done in this Nationwide car, it just woke a lot of people up,” Wallace said. “It really has. I’m glad I was able to help him with that. But he has helped us twicefold by getting some legitimacy back in our team.”
Wallace won the Cup championship in 1989 and currently works as an analyst for ESPN’s NASCAR coverage. Still, his team doesn’t have the research and development budget to compete with major Cup teams that also run in the Nationwide series.
“But I still feel like we can beat them,” Stremme said.
Perhaps. But before they can start thinking about checkered flags and championships, Wallace and Stremme must work through a snag: They don’t have enough sponsorship to run a second car in every race for the rest of the season.
“We’re working like hell trying to fill more races,” Wallace said.
Stremme wants to do anything he can to help Wallace find sponsorship and his son become more consistent on the track, and in that way repay Wallace for his career advice.
“It’s not just about race cars,” Stremme said. “I’m able to talk to him about a lot of things I’m going through in my career, and he’s been able to help quite a bit on that, too.”
And despite last year’s setbacks, Stremme believes he can win in Cup.
“I think I can still showcase a lot more of what I’m able to do,” Stremme said. “I’m able to do that a lot here with Rusty’s team. Each week, like I said, we go into it and people know we’re a contender, and I feel good about it.”
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