Driver of the #55 Napa Toyota, and owner of Michael Waltrip Racing, Michael Waltrip Getty Images/Sam Greenwood
There has been a full time Cup driver with the last name of Waltrip in every Cup season since 1975, That will change next year as Michael Waltrip steps out of the #55 Napa Toyota and assumes a more traditional ownership role of his race team, while running a partial schedule in his #55.
While Michael never achieved the amount of success that his older brother did, this is a two time winner of the Daytona 500, and a wonderful character. Hopefully he will continue to entertain NASCAR Nation in his new role as owner.
Stepping out of the car has to be extremely hard for Michael, but it is probably the right decision on his part. Martin Truex, with new crew chief Pat Tryson, gives the new #56 Napa Toyota team its best chances and winning, and at running well moving forward.
It seems that Michael will be able to steer the direction of his team better as an owner, than as an owner/driver. To be blunt his performance of late does not qualify him to continue driving. That may be harsh but this is a performance industry and Michael has always been a little short on the performance part of it.
For 2009 he had just two top ten finishes, he led just 23 laps, and his race team has problems that will require an owner to step up and fix. Waltrip had six DNF’s in 2009 and while three of them were due to wrecks, three were also due to equipment failure. In this era of NASCAR that is far too high.
Thanks to him being in the top 35 in owner’s points Waltrip made all 34 races he attempted, Waltrip had Patrick Carpentier drive both 2009 road course races. Michael completed 89.7 of the laps run in his 34 races, and he had an average start of 30.5 and an average finish of 27.1. Along the way in 2009 he earned nearly 3.4 million dollars in purse money.
Based on the success of teammate David Reutiman and the success of Marcos Ambrose driving Michael Waltrip Racing equipment the addition of Truex is a huge step forward for this race team. We should fully expect all three of their cars to run well, and we should not be surprised to see all three teams win a 2010 Sprint Cup race.
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