Heaven's New Spotter

Big Dave - or King Dave - Reininger was one heck of a spotter, and one heck of a human being. He's third from left, in the gray shirt with the white mustache. Photo: Bret Kelley/IndyCar 

The spotters at Indianapolis are the unsung heroes that allow the magical moves on the race track to happen.

And few of them were as beloved or as good at what they do as David Reininger, or as he was better known, "King Dave."

A racing lifer, radio host, writer and reporter besides his main job on top of the box, Reininger immediately made an impact on my young career when I started out with a then nascent website called Motorsport.com - you may have heard of it.

It'd been around for almost 15 years in 2008, but as the Internet was starting to take hold and really make an imprint in motorsports, it was one of the founding sites and Big Dave was one of its founding fathers.

Our crew for my first Indy 500 was me, the then-rookie in the field at age 18 (I turned 19 a month later after finishing my freshman year of college), Allan Brewer, Joe Jennings and Big Dave, all under the tutelage and editing of our dear friend Nancy Knapp Schilke, who pushed us all.

Big Dave wasn't in the media center much. Not because he didn't want to, mind you, but because he was busy getting a bird's eye view of the track from a view so few get to scale - high side at either Turn 1 or Turn 3, navigating the way.

He only had a win to defend. Big Dave helped guide Dario Franchitti to the first of his three Indianapolis 500 victories, in the rain-shortened 2007 race. It was a win that completed his own perfect weekend, as he also guided Alex Lloyd to the win in the Indy Lights race, the Freedom 100.

In 2008 I remember his work with another Schmidt Indy Lights driver - James Davison - as he carved through that field and showed the unabashed speed he's had throughout his career. The Australian's amazing aggression on-track was balanced so nicely by Big Dave's calm voice and clear eyes in the skies.

When he was in the media center, Big Dave was there to support us and give us a friendly smile, big laugh or a key edit. We knew when something was going to his motorsport.com email address, it'd get the Big Dave seal of approval on site before going to Nancy to ensure it was all good to post. Me not wanting to make the rookie mistakes, between Nancy's guidance, Allan's advice, Joe's reliability and Big Dave's second set of eyes, we had a good team in play.

Qualifying that year saw Bump Day return in earnest after a few years where there wasn't a major Bump Day of note. The only highlights of the previous five years were Felipe Giaffone's Babies 'R Us-to-Bump 'Em Out run for A.J. Foyt to troll Arie Luyendyk Jr. in a Coyote orange No. 48 car in 2005 and Tony Stewart's occasional tease of a run that never happened.

I'm sitting in the media center on Bump Day when Big Dave came up to me and that smooth, beautiful big voice of his made a suggestion.

"Hey T," he called, preparing for me for what was to come next. "You gotta come downstairs trackside and see this. This is good (stuff)."

The last hour of Bump Day in 2008 was as magical as Big Dave set it up. There were only four drivers really going for one spot, but it was good as advertised. Buddy Lazier hung the wing way back on his Hemelgarn car, and made the show despite having a car that had no business being in the field of 33. Mario Dominguez, Roger Yasukawa and Max Papis were on the outside looking in.

Seeing Lazier's embrace with wife Kara and Ron Hemelgarn, and the rest of that team, was the highlight of my first ever qualifying weekend. I couldn't tell you who else started where beyond the front row that year, but I remember damn well Buddy Lazier qualified 32nd.

That was Big Dave's eyes and foresight helping to make a memory that'd last a lifetime. A spotter's genius, if you will, to know what to look for.

And since I missed the 2011 Bump Day on account of graduating, that'd be the first and only Bump Day I'd get to witness on site. Since I'm not sure if the field will get back to a size bigger than 33 cars attempting to qualify down the road, it might not be topped.

Big Dave didn't just win with Dario. He won with Tony Kanaan in 2013, completing both their journeys back to the top.

For "TK," the 2013 win was 12 years in the making - all the heartache, frustration and angst of the near-misses finally came good.

Someone had to call it when TK went up the middle on that last restart, leaving his old team, Andretti Autosport, high and dry to watch as he passed then-leader Ryan Hunter-Reay and with Carlos Munoz trying to get him back. When Dario crashed in Turn 1, TK had his Indy 500 victory.

The common denominator in the two wins wasn't a manufacturer (Dario's was Honda, TK's Chevrolet) or a team (Dario's was Andretti, TK's was KV). The common denominator in two of Indy's most popular wins was Big Dave.

Countless others who knew Big Dave better will be able to tell a better story about the man he was, but I can offer this up.

Big Dave probably had the biggest heart I've ever met in racing.

He was a Swiss Army knife in motorsports. You don't juggle all the roles he did as well as he did, for as long as he did, with as big a smile as he did, unless you love life and make the most out of each day as he did.

He loved taking time to entertain. His house in the shadow of the Speedway at Indy was always a treat to visit in May, when he wasn't in the Northeast. The collection of cars and stories highlighted a trip over - along with the clientele there, all Indy fans.

And the food? Glorious. This is where the Big Dave moniker cedes to King Dave. Cookouts were as amazing as calls from up top.

Most importantly, he made you feel like a friend... immediately. When I was starting out, it was easy to be skittish, nervous and tense when trying to make it both in the IndyCar media center and in the paddock.

But Big Dave was there to be a voice of calm, and offer up that big 'ol smile from beneath that bushy, trademark white 'stache.

Every interaction was always a, "How you doin', T?" with a big 'ol handshake. We covered each other on stories more times than I can count when I was with Motorsport.com in my first few years trying to make it into the sport. And Big Dave made those first few years so much easier with his calm demeanor, advice and suggestions.

When you're out on a race track, running at 230 mph, you need all the calm you can get from up top. That's what Big Dave brought to the spotter's stand.

Cancer may have taken Big Dave far too soon on Earth.

But heaven just gained King Dave for the rest of time, to call "clear outside" from a different kind of, up top.

Danny Watts' brave announcement makes the news...

Leventis (left), Watts (center) and Kane (right) at 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans driver parade. Photo courtesy Strakka Racing

They say all good things must come to an end and last June, Strakka Racing’s longtime trio of Jonny Kane, Danny Watts and Nick Leventis drove their final race together at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

One of the rare certainties in sports car racing is that you’d expect a Strakka prototype in the field with that driver lineup intact, always punching above their weight. The group won their class at Le Mans in 2010 and finished fifth overall. In their final race together, they finished fourth with an older car in a deep 23-car LMP2 class.

Watts stepped aside from driving after that race, and hadn’t made a major driving reappearance since.

He’s regarded as a driver with a great smile, genuinely good insight – which I saw on all four of my occasions covering Le Mans on site from 2009 through 2015 – and a plucky persistence behind the wheel which saw either him or Kane the standard pacesetter for the entry. But he was no longer going to be a driver in a Strakka LMP2 car.

So he hadn’t had a reason to be in the news. That was until today, as Watts revealed he’s gay. This meant he had to put on a brave face to overcompensate for it the entirety of his racing career.

I figured this blog would be a better platform for penning some thoughts on the announcement.

Alas, the first thought I have is that Watts’ revelation is that it’s a massively brave decision. Racing has a lot of good people involved, although there are some questionable characters. It can also be bogged down by sexism and provide a feeding ground for machismo – where heterosexual males have fun playing with race cars and living the proverbial dream. The ones who are lucky enough to cover it are the ones just telling the stories. For Watts to have to hide his true identity in a world where being an alpha male isn’t just preferred, it’s almost required, speaks volume of his courage.

The second is that he managed to persist and succeed at his day job regardless of the storm that was boiling beneath the surface. What Watts’ sexual preference is has nothing on his ability to manhandle a prototype, with whatever setup it had, with whatever power it produced, and with whoever he was sharing the car with. Seeing a team have as much stability as Strakka seemed to have, knowing it would be that same trio, spoke volumes of how well that core group worked together.

The third thought, and arguably the most important, is that the fact this is news at all reveals how far motorsport still has to come. Matt Beer wrote it well in his Autosport column, saying: “It's statistically ludicrous to think that only heterosexual white males can be any good at driving fast or that only heterosexual white males would enjoy watching people drive fast.”

He’s right, and in addition, there are those non-heterosexual white males who’ve made an impact in racing. It’s a black driver who’s a multiple-time World Champion and easily F1’s biggest star in Lewis Hamilton. There have been female drivers who have won races and championships in open-wheel and drag racing for decades.

And that’s just on the driving front. Let’s not forget Leena Gade, for instance, who was a pioneer with Audi from an engineering perspective. Ruth Buscombe is a strategy ace from the F1 pit wall who brought debut points to Haas F1 Team and also aided Sauber in scoring a pivotal points-scoring finish last year in Brazil. Andrea Mueller has been named lead engineer for Ryan Blaney in NASCAR this year. The list could go on…

From a personal standpoint, some of my best friends in the industry are female and a more blended, more inclusive environment would be better for the sport longer-term – if it is to grow beyond the niche it is now – rather than maintaining its long-standing identity as the “good ‘ol boys club.”

Success should not be determined based on your ethnicity, your gender, or your sexual preference. It should only be determined by whether or not you can produce in your line of work in the industry.

For the entirety of his career, I never looked at Watts as anything other than an unfailingly polite, dedicated race driver who was part of a team that overachieved in sports car racing more often than not.

And today’s announcement that he has a certain sexual preference does nothing to change that.

The reaction to Watts' announcement has featured a number of positive comments on social media thus far, and that's been great to see.

I admire Watts' courage, I respect his bravery and I'm hopeful this announcement could be one that changes the conversation, and perhaps opens doors for more proper diversity in the motorsport arena.