By Tony Veneziano

When Aaron Reutzel crossed the finish line first at Thunderbowl Raceway in Tulare, California, on March 9 with the World of Outlaws Craftsman Sprint Car Series, a weight was lifted off his shoulders. 

After a number of near misses, he earned an elusive first win with the Outlaws in a thrilling 35-lap event that saw three different drivers lead, with countless slide jobs traded over the course of the race.

Among the close calls that Reutzel had with the World of Outlaws Craftsman Sprint Car Series over the last few seasons was an event at Salina Highbanks Speedway in Oklahoma in 2015, which was his debut with the series. He led the first five laps of that race, after starting on the outside of the front row. He would ultimately finish fourth in that event. 

“I had led quite a few of them and they (wins) are so hard to come by,” said Reutzel of World of Outlaws races. “I think out of all of them I had led, it was self-inflicted losing the lead in most. Those guys are just so good and they don’t make mistakes, especially when you have Donny Schatz behind you. It was good to get that one over with, so I could quit focusing on getting the first win and just focus on racing.”

Reutzel, who won the Peter Murphy Classic at Thunderbowl Raceway in 2015, driving for legendary car owner Dennis Roth, applied some of what he learned in that 50-lap race in the 35-lapper with the World of Outlaws Craftsman Sprint Car Series. 

In that race three years ago, he made a late-race charge over the final 10-15 laps, after biding his time early in the going. Reutzel noted that he used the same approach on his way to winning with the Outlaws, after starting fourth and falling back to seventh just past the halfway point of the race.

“Tulare fits my driving style for some reason,” he shared. “It was pretty much up my alley, where you have to get up on the wheel but yet you have to be smart about it. For me, it was honestly the perfect race track. When the fuel load came off and the car was more stable, I was searching around and found some lines and watched some stuff other people were doing. 

"I think with about 15 to go, I started picking people off. We had that last caution and I think they told us there was 10 to go and it was go time then. I knew what I could and couldn’t do and kept my nose clean and everything was good to go.”

Reutzel, who had owned his own race team in the past, teamed up in the offseason with fellow Texas native and now part-time driver Josh Baughman to form Baughman-Reutzel Motorsports. 

The new association allows the native of Clute, Texas, to focus his energies more on driving and the actual racing aspect, especially on race day at the track, rather than having to worry about the business side of running the team and the dollars and cents involved with that facet. That equates to being able to be more aggressive behind the wheel.

“I caught myself a little bit in that A-main, being a little too conservative, where I needed to focus on driving harder and not worry about tearing stuff up,” Reutzel said. “I don’t tear much stuff up, but if you tear something up going for it, those guys are OK with it because they want to win races. It’s a little bit harder to do that when you own your own equipment.”

Reutzel, who has spent the last few seasons competing with the American Sprint Car Series (ASCS), where he won a championship in 2015, is focusing his attention on 410-sprint car racing this season. 

Following the West Coast swing with the World of Outlaws Craftsman Sprint Car Series, he will return to the Midwest to follow the Arctic Cat All Star Circuit of Champions tour. Reutzel will also compete in select races with the Outlaws.

“It’s such a different animal racing 360s,” he noted. “That’s a pill draw format and there is a lot of luck involved because motors are so equal. Here with the Outlaws, motors are probably more equal than we think, but we are de-tuning them by the end of the night. This is a totally different animal of racing.”

@AaronReutzel wins at @TulareRaceway and captures his first career @WorldofOutlaws victory. #WoOCraftSCS pic.twitter.com/Ri0GpF8TOG

— DB3IMAGING (@db3imaging) March 10, 2018

Hitting the road with the Arctic Cat All Star Circuit of Champions, Reutzel will face stiff competition each night. Leading the charge for the All Stars is six-time and defending series champion Chad Kemenah. With the team he has in place, Reutzel expects to be at the front of the field, despite visiting a majority of tracks on the schedule for the first time.

“I want to win a few races and want to be in the hunt for the championship,” Reutzel said. “If we get it that would be great. If not, I would like to be in the top three for our first year.”

In three starts thus far in 2018, Reutzel has a pair of top five finishes. In just the second race for the Baughman-Reutzel Motorsports pairing, he finished fifth at Las Vegas with the Outlaws against a stacked field of 44 entries. 

The next race was at Tulare and he found himself in Victory Lane. The only other driver other than Reutzel who finished among the top five in the finale at Las Vegas and at Thunderbowl Raceway was nine-time and defending series champion Donny Schatz.

“I was pretty surprised,” Reutzel admitted of the fast start to the season. “I was really nervous going out to Vegas. Normally, I do Winter Heat or the Chili Bowl or something to keep me racing a little bit and this past off-season. I didn't do any of that this year. It had been a while since I was in a 410 (September 9, 2017, to be exact) and the last time we were at Las Vegas, we didn’t do very well and really didn’t have too good of notes for there. Everything came together well it is still coming together pretty well.”

With his first World of Outlaws Craftsman Sprint Car Series win under his belt, Reutzel is not changing his approach when he returns to action this weekend at the Stockton Dirt Track. 

He said his team will treat each race the way it did at Las Vegas and Tulare. With the results those races produced, that’s a pretty good plan of attack.