Buhl Retires

Robbie Buhl announced Friday that he was retiring effective immediately from his position as driver of the Dreyer and Reinbold #24 Purex IRL Indy car. Thank you Robbie!

Those of you who know me, know that I have always rooted for Robbie. I always thought he was a pretty good driver, seemed like a good guy, one who always seemed to have time for autographs, yet time to driver the car.
Unfortunately Robbie fell into the trap so many drivers fall in to. One of car ownership. I'm not knocking owners, but I have maintained forever that you simply cannot both drive and own the car. It just puts too much of a strain on a persons time.

As an owner your time is spent with sponsors and trying to attract new sponsors for your program. You are dealing with team personnel issues as well as trying to strike a balance between being competitive and profitable, lest we forget this is a business. Throwing driver responsibilities on top of all that and it is a recipe for failure. One of the major jobs is going to be neglected. Be it driver or owner side, if you are not 100% on all jobs then there will be no success. Something Robbie has to have seen over the past couple of years.

I don't want to sound like I am picking on Buhl, better drivers than he have failed. Dale Earnhardt found much less success at the wheel once he started DEI and especially when DEI was fielding Cup cars. DW never found any success, Eddie Cheever had very limited success (although an Indy win is a big deal, it was still when the IRL had a bunch of hacks), Adrian Fernandez and even A.J Foyt have had limited success since 1980 being both owner and driver. In fact Foyt is the last one to have any sustained success as a driver owner and that was back in the 70's.

I salute Robbie's decision and hope this will help the team attract new sponsors, generate more money and become competitive. I see today that he has signed Mike to drive for the team. I like this a first step to get back to where the team was when they started. Of course they are still saddled with the Chevy engine, but maybe they can concentrate on more testing as well.