By John Berti

It's amazing the snowball effect a typographical error can have.

East Bay Raceway Park reported on their website and in releases to the press that David Reutimann finished second in the open wheel modified feature this past Saturday night. It was a typographical error as it was Greg Reutimann not David. David wasn't even in attendance.

The Tampa Tribune had the erroneous information within its auto racing results Monday morning. There may be other newspapers in the Tampa Bay area which did likewise. Even yours truly gave the bogus information in my column for Karnac.com.

I can only imagine how many readers were upset with themselves that they did not go to East Bay and missed seeing David Reutimann, who is in contention for rookie of the year honors in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series driving for Darrell Waltrip, race. I must admit I was one of them.

I found out about the error when I visited Buzzie Reutimann at his Reutimann Racing shop in Zephyrhills. I commented that wouldn't you just know it when I don't go to the races at East Bay David races. Buzzie gave me a puzzled look and said, "David didn't race at East Bay, that was Greg."

I informed Buzzie about what I'd done in my Karnac.com column. I felt so bad that I told him I was going to apologize to Greg right away so please excuse me. Off I went to nearby Reutimann Collision.

I got a warm welcome from Greg and I surprised him when I said I was coming over to apologize to him. "Apologize for what?" he asked. I informed him of what had happened.

It seems Greg knew all about it as he went to East Bay's website early that morning. He was not upset, in fact he had some fun with it. He told me he called David at about 9:30 a.m. He said to David "I can never catch a break even when I do well its you, David, who gets the credit."

While I was visiting Greg I thought I'd ask him why it is that he's been doing so well of late at East Bay. He attributes it to two people: Mike Rudder and Uncle Buzzie.

"Mike is my new chassic man and he sets the car up." Greg said, "The new set up has made the car handle better than ever."

He told me that a lot of credit also has to go to Reutimann Racing and Uncle Buzzie. "Buzzie has helped a little bit here and a little bit there changing items on the car and the result is that we've hit on a good combination."

Well it was about time for me to move on. We parted with my congratulating him on his great 2nd place finish and I'll see that you get your due credit.


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