by Darrell Waltrip

Darrell Waltrip: Everything is the same for next year. David Reutimann is back. NTN Bearings is back, bigger and better than ever. Bobby Kennedy will continue to be the team manager. Jason Overstreet will be the crew chief. I know we'll be better. We've learned so much this year.

David has matured so much. At Homestead-Miami Speedway, he showed me and everybody else who paid attention what he had learned this year. He demonstrated that he learned from his mistakes. He sat on the pole and finished fourth. I was so impressed with him. Then he went to the banquet, and he absolutely stole the show. I wouldn't say that he's necessarily known for his public speaking or for being a man of a lot of words, but he brought down the house.

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I was so proud of him to win rookie of the year because he truly is a rookie, and he did an outstanding job all year long. He had seen only two or three of the race tracks, let alone run on them before. Yes, he had some accidents that he could have avoided. But he avoided doing things at Homestead that caused him and others problems in the past. I look forward to working with him again next year. As a driver, he's learned a ton. He's matured a lot. I think he'll be a championship contender in 2005.

Our intentions are to have a second team next year. We're trying to put together a sponsorship deal and hire a second driver. We're looking for somebody who can complement David. We're excited about Toyota and where we're going with them. We're excited about the gains we've made this year. We can't wait to get started on next year because David is going to be better, and we want to put somebody who can complement him and help our whole program. That's what we're going to work on over the next 90 days.