(Joe Ruttman is an anomaly. As he’s gotten older, his on-track results have actually gotten better. The 56-year-old, who met with a fair amount of success in the NASCAR Winston Cup and Busch Series in the past, continues to be a terror in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series these days, driving a Dodge for Bobby Hamilton Racing. His one hope this year is to win an elusive NASCAR championship, and he’s on track to do just that in 2001.)
RacingOne: Most drivers’ skills, after they turn 50, seem to diminish, or at least their on-track results are not as good as they once were. Your results have actually gotten better. Can you explain that?
Ruttman: I wish I could. If I could figure that out, I’d write and book and make a lot of money out of it. What you need to do is enjoy what you’re doing until they take it away it from you. If you’re enjoying yourself, then that’s the main thing, and that makes me perform better on the track. A few years ago I felt like I was giving 100 percent on the track in Busch and Cup, but in retrospect, I probably wasn’t, and there were decisions made on my career not of my own choosing. They felt like I didn’t have what it took any more, but I hadn’t achieved everything I had set out to achieve. By sheer desire, and the fact the truck series came along at the time, I was able to stay with it and I’m still with it today. I’m healthy and I’ve got a great attitude toward racing, and I’m having a lot of fun out there. Plus, I’ve got great equipment, so you can’t beat that.
RacingOne: How much of a savior was the truck series to your career when it came along? Did you honestly feel like your Winston Cup and Busch days were behind you?
Ruttman: At that particular time, I was floating in and out of cars. The truck series really hadn’t crossed my mind yet. I wanted to be in Winston Cup. It was a mental letdown when I couldn’t find a ride. Then the truck series was born, and Mark Simo came along and asked me if I would like to run his truck. As we talked, I thought it was a dumb idea. My mental picture of a truck was having a gun rack in the back and putting up some deer antlers. But the more I thought about it, and that took about 30 seconds, I said ‘wait a minute.’ I’m unemployed right now, and I have been for the past six months. If I took this job, it would give me an opportunity to keep racing, stay active and make a few bucks. I didn’t want to have to worry about things at that point in my career, so I took it. The trucks drove a lot like Winston Cup cars, and all of a sudden, it was like I was back in Winston Cup. There were some strong owners who came along and some strong drivers, like Mike Skinner and Kenny Irwin, and people began to realize that this was a legitimate series. Drivers were being developed and primed for Winston Cup. It’s really turned into a super series, far more competitive than what people realize. You look at Kevin Harvick and what he’s done. He drove a truck, then went to Busch for a year and jumped right into a Winston Cup car and is successful. That’s got to tell you that the truck series is a little bit tougher than people imagined.
RacingOne: Do you find that the younger guys in the truck series call you sir, or Mr. Ruttman, or do they feel comfortable about just calling you Joe?
Ruttman: It’s amazing sometimes the amount of years that separates me and some of these younger guys. They don’t know what to think. Hell, some of their dads aren’t nearly as old as me. They look at me in amazement that I’m even out there, but they do respect me. I really don’t even discuss the age factor with them. But they do talk to me like a father. I guess I’m a pretty old codger. When I was younger, I was about the same way with Bobby Allison. I went to a driver’s meeting at a track in Salem, Ind., and remember thinking, ‘Man, that guy is old.’ I’m not that much younger than he was. He just looked old to me. But when the young guys look at me, it’s fun to imagine what they’re thinking. It’s fun to run against them. As far as what they call me, I just hope that they can call me plain old Joe.
RacingOne: For years, there have been rumors the truck series just won’t be able to make it, yet it’s continued to function and there’s some great racing in the series. Your thoughts on how the truck series has survived and where it’s headed?
Ruttman: At the end of the first year of the series, Bill France Jr. put it best. He said to me, ‘Joe, it took the trucks one year to be in the same position it took Winston Cup 20 years to be in. That’s pretty fast acceleration. It started off well, then it tapered off in the next couple of years as the promotion fell off. The rumors had it that it wouldn’t last, but four years is really the critical stage, and we’ve survived that. With the exception of maybe a Matt Kenseth or a Dale Earnhardt Jr., a lot of the rest of the young guys in Winston Cup have come through the truck series, and that says a lot. To me, we’re like a AAA affiliate of Winston Cup. The truck series, in my opinion, is a necessary thing, and I believe it’s going to be around for quite a while, if NASCAR continues to manage it correctly.
RacingOne: Why do you believe the Dodges were so dominant on the track earlier this year?
Ruttman: Really, there’s only one reason for it – unity. I raced for another brand for virtually all of the earlier years of the truck series, and it seemed as if two to four teams would get the bulk of the financial rewards for that particular brand. And each one of those teams would withhold information they would gather from the other teams, so it was like a little tight-knit group. When Dodge began to come at it full steam, they did it from a totally different perspective. If a truck went to the wind tunnel, the information was open to all its teams. On the engineering side, Dodge Motorsports passed everything down to the teams equally. The success we’ve had speaks for itself. I just think we’ve got better teams on the Dodge side as a whole, and it’s because it’s a community effort. That’s the way Dodge does it, and that’s the way it should be done.
RacingOne: How tough was the early part of 1999 for you, when you were out of a job and really didn’t know if you were going to get another full-time deal?
Ruttman: Words really can’t describe how I felt. Initially I wasn’t really concerned because I thought my record would be able to stand on its own. Then, realization set in about three or four weeks later. It’s hard to ponder the words that try to describe how I felt over those six months. It killed me. I was crushed, I was demoralized, and I was mad. I felt all of those emotions. It just finally appeared to me that I had been knocked out of what I had done all my life. I have always been a driver by trade, and to lose that, well… The financial end of it was one thing, but the sport basically said I had lost my performance edge and that I couldn’t win anymore. I didn’t feel that was the case. But the bottom line was that I was unemployed. It was scary, and it was probably the worst six months of my life.
RacingOne: In your opinion, are there just too many politics involved in this sport? It seems like sometimes the racing is secondary to some of the things that are said and done lately.
Ruttman: At my age, it’s something I guess I really haven’t touched on. When you’re younger, you have to play the politics game. Now, at my age, that’s not really necessary. I say what I feel is the truth. That doesn’t mean you have to believe what I say, but I’m going to say whatever comes to mind and heart. I don’t say something just to be correct for NASCAR’s sake. I speak with a straight tongue, and I mean whatever I say. Age has helped me do that. A young guy, I guess, can’t take that same avenue. Sometimes there are things that happen in the sport that don’t need to happen, but NASCAR’s going to do what they’re going to do.
RacingOne: Your late brother Troy won the Indianapolis 500 years ago. First of all, were you there when he won it, and how much of a joy was it for you to watch him win it?
Ruttman: We didn’t have a TV back then, and I wasn’t there, so that’s a shame. I wish I could have seen it. My brother has always been my hero. I’m not saying this because he’s my brother, but Troy was one of the finest drivers I’ve ever seen. The equipment he had was a part of it, but he was just a tremendous driver. He did have one problem, however, and that was that he was an alcoholic. That probably deterred what success he might have been able to gather over the years. To give you an idea of what kind of driver he really was, Parnelli Jones came up to me one time and he asked me who I thought his hero was. He said it was Troy Ruttman. I would say that statement kinda stands for itself.
RacingOne: You’ve got a tremendous shot at winning the NCTS championship this year. After all these years, how gratifying would it be for you to win a championship at one of NASCAR’s highest levels?
Ruttman: It would be very gratifying for me, but it would have been more gratifying, I guess, if I could have won it a couple of years earlier because I could have snuck up on people. They didn’t expect it back then. This year, everybody can see us coming. Still, though, it would mean everything. It won’t be the end of the world if we don’t win it because I still have the desire and we can go get them next year. We’ve got a lot of young guys on the team here at the shop, and there shouldn’t be any reason why we shouldn’t be a player for the championship in the next couple of years to come.
RacingOne: Along the same lines, is there any one thing you haven’t accomplished in your racing career – besides winning a NASCAR championship – you would like to accomplish?
Ruttman: There’s one thing that really keeps me going, but I’m not sure if I’m going to get a chance to do it. I’d really like to win a Winston Cup race. That’s one thing that really motivates me. I’d really like to have someone like a Robert Yates call me up and ask me to run a Winston Cup race for them, and have the chance to do that once before I quit. That’s something I set out to do a long time ago, and that’s what really keeps me motivated.
RacingOne: You’ve been racing for a long time. What are you going to do when it’s all over?
Ruttman: That’s scary to even think about. If you give me six months, I might have some thoughts on that. I do know, I want to be involved with some team in some manner, maybe not necessarily as the owner. I love the sport so much, and I hope that I can be an integral part of a good team and help it succeed, in whatever capacity that might be.
