Wallace, Rudd NASCAR Careers Coming To A Close

 

By TONY FABRIZIO
afabrizio@tampatrib.com

HOMESTEAD - -- The numbers change, the colors change, but many of the stars remain the same. Though not forever.

Even in NASCAR, where a marquee driver's career can span a quarter-century, turnover happens eventually. It'll come Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway when icons Rusty Wallace and Ricky Rudd make, in all likelihood, their final starts as full-time drivers.

Wallace is sticking to the retirement plans he announced 15 months ago. Rudd is taking at minimum a hiatus after starting every race in the past 25 years. When the checkered flag falls in the Ford 400, two thick chapters in NASCAR history will close.

"It's the last one, and I think some of the emotions are starting to set in right now," Wallace said. "When I start that race and get out of that car around 7:30 at night, it's going to be, 'OK, what's next? You're not going to get back in the car.'

"It's a little bit sad. I've been doing this my whole life. It's going to be an adjustment."

Wallace, 49, took Rookie of the Year honors in 1984 and has been a force ever since. He won only one championship (1989), but his 55 victories rank eighth all-time.

Never one to duck the spotlight, Wallace wanted to go out with a splash, and he's done so. His "Rusty's Last Call" tour has had more parties than an undefeated Florida Gators season.

Moreover, Wallace has accomplished his most important goal -- he is going out as a championship-caliber driver. He made the Chase for the Championship, no small task given that Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn't make it. With a little more luck, he might still be within range of leader Tony Stewart.

"We had a bunch of great runs, and all of a sudden the world comes crashing in," Wallace said of his performance in the Chase -- he's eighth after climbing as high as second. "All the things that could go wrong went wrong -- loose lug nuts, flat tires, miscue on a pit stop.

"But all year long, it's been wonderful."

Rudd, also 49, actually has been around longer than Wallace in NASCAR's premier division -- since 1975. When he doesn't take the green flag in February's Daytona 500, one of the most remarkable streaks in racing, if not all of sports, will end.

NASCAR's iron man has made 787 consecutive starts, that's every race since 1981 and a record that probably never will be broken. Along the way, Rudd has won 23 races and finished in the top 10 in points 19 times. He was the 1991 championship runner-up.

To keep the streak going, Rudd has raced with injuries, postponed surgeries and thrown up in trash cans to rid his system of food poisoning. His toughness was best exemplified in 1984, when, after a spectacular end-over-end crash in the Busch Clash landed him in the hospital, he taped his eyelids open to race in the following week's Daytona 500.

At the time, he explains now, Rudd had just landed a top-notch ride with Bud Moore, and he feared that if he gave up the seat to a substitute driver, he might not get it back.

So he raced.

"When I got in the car [for Daytona 500 practice two days after the wreck], my face was still swollen and I had bruised and torn cartilage in my rib cage and other sprains and such," Rudd recalled. "Then, when I went into the corner, I couldn't see. It was like the lights went out."

Rudd first thought he had a brain injury but then realized his peripheral vision was being obscured because of swelling around his eyes. He came back into the garage, pulled a roll of duct tape out of the tool box and cut a few strips. He used them to tape his swollen eyelids to his forehead.

"You do what you have to do," Rudd says. "It wasn't for the media attention -- there wasn't much media around at the time. I guess it was part of my makeup."

Along the way, Rudd also picked up the nickname Rooster. A cartoon rooster has been painted on the back of Rudd's No. 21 Ford for Sunday's race.

"Roosters are feisty, and they're fighters," Darrell Waltrip told the Richmond Times-Dispatch in a story about Rudd. "That's how I view Ricky Rudd. He's real tenacious, a real feisty guy."

Rudd, who only announced his hiatus two weeks ago, plans to take some time off and consider his options. Since he's nearly 50 and wants to spend more time with his family, it's a long shot he will race full time again.

"It hasn't really registered yet that this is going to be the last one, potentially for good," Rudd said about Sunday's race. "It probably won't sink in until January testing when it cranks up and, for sure, February when the Daytona 500 cranks up and I'm not in the race."