Troy Ruttman (born 11 March 1930 in Mooreland, Oklahoma – 19 May 1997) was an American race car driver.
He was the older brother of NASCAR driver Joe Ruttman, Jerry Ruttman & Jimmie Ruttman.
Ruttman won the Indianapolis 500 in 1952, at the age of 22 years and 80 days. As of 2018, he is the youngest winner of the race.
From 1950–1960, the Indianapolis 500 also counted toward the World Drivers’ Championship (now synonymous with Formula One), although most of the racers did not compete in the other races in the Championship. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
An imposing figure, 6feet 4inch Troy Ruttman physically towered over most of his competitors plus had commensurate driving skills as well. He had a meteoric early career and in winning the 1952 Indianapolis 500, aged 22 years and 80 days, it earned him the honour of being the youngest to win a round of the World Championship for more than fifty years, until Fernando Alonso won the Hungarian GP in 2003. Besides being the youngest winner he was also the last driver to win at the wheel of a front engine dirt-track racecar. At that time the race was part of the FIA World Championship from 1950 to 1960 and drivers competing there were credited with World Championship points. He participated in nine World Championship races (seven times while Indianapolis was part of it plus the 1958 French and German Grands Prix, though did not start in the latter race) plus contested the 1957 and 1958 ‘Two Worlds Trophy’ races at Monza. He led several of the twelve Indy 500 races in which he participated but was a frequent victim of mechanical failures. He raced in the AAA and USAC Champ Car series in 1949–1952, 1954, 1956–1957 and 1960–1964 with 58 starts, including the Indianapolis 500 in 1949–1952, 1954, 1956–1957 and 1960–1964. He finished in the top ten 26 times, taking five victories and finished runner-up in 1952’s National Championship and would also win the 1956 USAC Short Track Stock Car division title. On one occasion he was in the middle of the Bonneville Salt Flats, as a member of a team of drivers hired by Ford’s advertising department to cover 50,000 miles in 30 days; falling asleep at the wheel one midnight, he awoke to discover he was two and a half miles off course. Drivers including Jim Rathmann, Dan Gurney and Bobby Unser listed him as one of their racing idols and Rodger Ward stated he was the most naturally talented race car driver he had ever seen. But less than three months after winning in 1952 he was involved in a serious sprint car accident and was out of racing for the rest of the year and all of the following season. Although he returned in 1954 it was on a reduced basis and he was never the same.
Born on the 11th March, 1930 Troy was the elder son of destitute migrants, subsisting on a patch of hardpan called Billygoat Acres, a southern California colony of dustbowl emigres. He was the older brother of NASCAR drivers Joe, Jerry and Jimmie though sadly Jerry was killed at the age of eighteen in a motorbike accident. He underwent serious stomach surgery when he was four and would struggle with severe ulcers for the rest of his life. In 1936, aged six, the family moved to Southern California and lived with relatives as they could not afford their own house. Although he began racing at fifteen, he had an early driving exploit at the age of nine, while living in the Los Angeles suburb of Lynwood. His father had taught him to drive and one day he volunteered to drive his mother to visit a friend though while driving he was spotted and pulled over by the police. He later stated this wasn’t the only traffic ticket he would ever receive! He worked two jobs, in an ice cream parlour plus delivering newspapers to help the family then, in 1945, after a friend told him of a roadster race in San Bernardino, he entered the family car and won, having used a cousin’s birth certificate to be eligible. After collecting his 25 dollars prize money, making more in one night than he could in a week with his two jobs, he quit high school and his jobs and raced five nights a week to support the family. He went on to win won 19 of 21 events and within a year was one of the wonders of the Los Angeles scene though due to his height, he would sometimes race in his socks, without shoes, as he was too tall and would struggle to fit in the car.
At seventeen he was the California Roadster Association Champion plus won his first five midget car races that season and in 1948 again took the Roadster championship plus was the United Racing Association Blue Circuit champion and had twenty three midget car victories.
In 1949 he moved on from Southern California and competed in the AAA and USAC Championship Car series, taking three AAA Sprint Car championships over the next three and a half seasons. He competed in 51 midget races, winning 16 and placing in the top three 28 times. When racing at Chicago’s Soldier Field, he was destroying the Midwest’s fastest open-cockpit drivers for 86 of the 100 laps before breaking down and at Langhorne in Philadelphia (one of the most lethal of racetracks that ever existed, with a section of the course having the nickname ‘Puke Hollow’)on his second lap he averaged 109mph to explode a standing record for mile dirt tracks. By the time he reached Oklahoma City the following week, his reputation had preceded him, and it was said the regulars were waiting and they put him on his head early in the race. Besides the fearsome Langhorne track he also contested races at Salem, Winchester and Dayton, daunting sprint-car speedways with arched corners and tree-trimmed slopes. On his debut at Dayton his midget had had its wheelbase elongated and ballast added so it could compete as a sprint car and he won plus became the first to lap Salem in less than 20 seconds. He entered his first 500 in 1949, at the age of 19, two years younger than the Indianapolis Motor Speedway rules allowed after producing the birth certificate of his elder cousin Ralph Wayne Ruttman. Racing a Wetteroth entered by Ray W. Carter, he finished twelfth even after the Offenhauser powered car lost its brakes and then its water pump, and spent 40 minutes in the pits. During the year he was injured in a crash at Arlington, Texas, and ended up with casts on both legs, up to his waist. He had a new Cadillac, so after removing the seat back and running a board from the front to the back, he lay his 6 foot 4inch frame on it as his wife drove him home to Southern California, with a detour through Oklahoma, where his relatives lived.
Returning to Indianapolis the following year with a Bowes Seal Fast Racing entered car he was fifteenth though the race was stopped after 138 of the scheduled 200 laps due to rain. The FIA World Championship started that year and consisted of six GP races, each held in Europe and open to F1 cars, plus the Indianapolis 500, which was run to AAA National Championship regulations. Further outings that year saw tenth at Langhorne and eleventh at Detroit, twelfth and thirteenth at the California State Fairgrounds and Milwaukee, fourteenth at the New York State Fair, fifteenth at Bay Meadows, seventeenth at Milwaukee and Phoenix and eighteenth at Darlington with his best results victories in August and October at Williams Grove.
In the following year he won again at Williams Grove plus took victories at Trenton, Carrell Speedway in California and twice at Dayton. Although he had long wanted to drive for JC Agajanian, he was aware of his real age and would not let him in one of his cars until he was twenty one, which came in 1951. He qualified sixth at Indianapolis with Agajanian’s Kurtis 200 but managed only 195 miles when a broken crankshaft ended his race after 78 laps while in races with a John Zink Kurtis he was sixth at the Illinois State Fairgrounds but did not finish at San Jose. Later in 1951 he travelled to Mexico to contest the fearsome Carrera Panamericana road race with Clay Smith. After the Mexican section of the Pan-American Highway was completed in 1950, a nine-stage, five-day race across the country was organised. The brainchild of Enrique Martin Moreno, the race was supported by President Miguel Aleman Valdes as a way to increase tourism and investment into Mexico. It ran for five years between 1950 and 1954 and attracted drivers from practically every discipline, including F1, rallying and NASCAR plus major European and American manufacturers. Drivers faced drastic temperature and altitude changes with race conditions ranging from hot deserts and swamps to high mountains and rainforests, and while some roads were sometimes four-lane highways at other times they were no more than gravel paths. However, with 24 fatalities during the five years it proved a particular dangerous motor race. In 1951 the race was run from south to north, starting in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas on the Mexican/Guatemalan border and finishing in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua on the Mexican/US Texas border near El Paso. The race was moved from early May to late November to avoid the hot and rainy weather at that time of year and to give the European teams a chance to compete during what was normally their off-season. Ferrari entered two blue and silver liveried 212 Inter Vignales, run under the Centro Deportivo Italiano banner and backed by the Sinclair Oil Corporation but though they did not technically satisfy the requirements of the touring car category, they were allowed to compete. Troy and Smith were entered in an ancient Mercury 89M sedan, which was reportedly bought for $1,000 in a used car lot. The race would exact a heavy toll upon drivers and there were four early fatalities. On the opening stage, a Packard driven by Mexican car dealer and veteran racer, Jose Estrada, skidded off the road and tumbled into a ravine; both he and co-driver Miguel González died in hospital later that afternoon. The Mayor of Oaxaca, Lorenzo Mayoral Lemus, lost his life when running between Tuxtla Gutiérrez and Oaxaca when his car went off a mountain road and he died in hospital. On the second day another accident claimed the life of Carlos Panini, a pioneer of Mexican aviation who had established Mexico’s first scheduled airline in 1927 and was credited with being the first pilot to fly a light plane around the world. He was at the wheel of an Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 SS but crashed while dicing with a young Bobby Unser and the car exploded on impact though the co-driver, Panini’s daughter Terese, escaped with minor injuries. At the finish, first and second places were taken by the Ferraris driven by Piero Taruffi/Luigi Chinetti and Alberto Ascari/Luigi Villoresi with American Bill Sterling (and Robert Sandige) third in a Chrysler Saratoga. Troy and Smith followed them home in fourth place in their ancient sedan, despite it only being good for barely 114mph at sea level plus he was also suffering badly with dysentery.
Then it all came right on his fourth visit to Indianapolis in 1952, in what would be a classic 500. A third of the field was made up of tough drivers from the Pacific Coast whom he had already battled against in hot rods at Gilmore. He qualified Agajanian’s red and cream liveried Kuzma on the inside of the third row and the front row was surging four abreast by the green flag. He ran in the top five for most of the race and later was running second to Bill Vukovich. His chief mechanic, Clay Brooking Smith, had him running on an 80-1010 blend of methanol, gasoline and nitro, and planned only two refuelling stops but the crew set him on fire during the second one. However, he remained in the cockpit as the flames rose, and the fire was extinguished, and later explained “I knew I’d never get the engine started again. And I knew if ever I was going to gamble with my life, this was the time, with a strong car in the Indianapolis 500.” Vukovich led 150 of the laps until a steering pin broke on lap 192 and Troy passed to take the lead 20 miles from the finish. Between the two of them they led 194 of the 200 laps and Jim Rathmann came in second, more than four minutes behind. In what would be the last of the Offenhauser-powered dirt track cars to win the 500 he had run a record 128.922mph and after the race, declared “I feel so good I could drive another 500 right now.” Newspaper reports hailed him as the ‘Pride of the Bobby Soxers.’ He drove eight more times at Indy, but could never recreate this victory and only won one more Indy car race, the Raleigh 200 at Southland Speedway, a month after the 500. Unfortunately, less than three months after winning the 500, he suffered a serious crash and its effects were devastating. He was racing the Agajanian sprint car he had loaned to the late Cecil Green but it wasn’t right after Green’s fatal accident at Winchester just a year before and its steering came apart at Cedar Rapids in Iowa. Troy veered off track and through a wooden rail, plunged over an embankment and crashed through a heavy diamond mesh fence, eventually stopping upside down next to a lamp post alongside some railroad tracks. His arm was horribly mangled and his shoulder suffered severe damage and he would be out of racing for almost two years. He attempted two races in 1953 but aggravated his badly broken arm by returning to racing too soon and underwent additional surgery. He also loaned another sprint car to a friend, who promptly entered a non AAA race, but though he later confessed to it, he was suspended.
He disappeared into a self imposed exile near the Salem Speedway, in Indiana, but when he returned in 1954 it was on a reduced basis and he was never the same. During his recuperation, he had begun to drink more and more to ease his physical pain, as well as his mental anguish while he could not drive, and admitted he spent his time drinking and playing cards. During this time he became friends with Wally Campbell, who had established a new standard for broad sliding a sprint car and that May had been banished from Indianapolis, who found him alarming. Sadly, while watching him race a sprint car at Salem, Campbell’s car left the track backwards, then exploded and burned in a hayfield. Troy took everybody home, killed a chicken for dinner and called a wake for him and everybody got drunk. On his return to racing he was seventh with a Kurtis 4000 at Milwaukee, twelfth at the Illinois State Fairgrounds and fifteenth with an Offenhauser powered Panzkraft D at an Independence day race at Darlington. He raced well in an Auto Shippers Kurtis 500 at Indianapolis, with an impressive charge from eleventh to fifth place on the first lap, to eventually finish fourth but that was as good as it would ever get again for him.
He did not qualify and did not finish in the following two years at Indianapolis and in 1956 retired at Milwaukee and from the Sebring 12 Hours alongside Howard Hively in a Ferrari 375 Plus though Troy took the 1956 USAC Short Track Stock Car division title. In two races at Milwaukee in 1957 he took tenth place with a Watson at the Rex Mays Memorial race though retired in the second but despite taking a strong lead at Indianapolis his race ended after 13 laps due to an oil leak.
In 1957 and 1958, the Race of Two Worlds (also referred to as ‘Monzanapolis’) was held and he competed in both events. Redevelopment had taken place at the circuit in 1954, including rebuilding the oval portion of the track which had been abandoned during the War. Giuseppe Bacciagaluppi, then president of the Automobile Club of Milan and chairman of the circuit, invited Duane Carter, competition director of the United States Automobile Club to attend 1956’s Italian GP. The two believed that an oval race held in Europe, instead of America, would be popular and could attract the top F1 and USAC teams to an international competition and Bacciagaluppi successfully convinced the Automobile Club of Italy to support the idea. The inaugural running took place in June 1957, shortly after the Indianapolis 500 and a few weeks before the French GP and preparations for the American drivers was done by Pat O’Connor in April when he drove a Chrysler test car for Firestone. The American race cars and equipment, along with a contingent of mechanics, travelled from Indianapolis to New York City, from where they were shipped to Genoa in Italy and trucked to Monza, while the rest of the team personnel and drivers would fly to the race. The race used Indy rules whereby 2.8 supercharged and 4.2 atmospheric engine restrictions were enforced, plus have a rolling start would kick off the race and the circuit would be run in an anti-clockwise direction. Three 63-lap heats were planned, with an hour break for repairs and rest between each heat, for a grand total of approximately 500 miles and the overall race winner would be determined by the driver who completed all three heats with the highest average speed. Of the fifteen cars entered, ten were USAC cars/drivers but only two teams arrived with F1 equipment, Mario Bornigia in a privateer Ferrari and Maserati with Behra. The rest of the F1 teams elected to miss the event, it was said citing the dangers of the speeds that could be reached on the banking and the threat to safety caused by the tyre wear. There were a further three entries from the World Sportscar Championship, with the Ecurie Ecosse Jaguars, who had just taken a 1-2 victory at the previous weekend’s Le Mans 24 Hours. Official practice began on the Wednesday, with all drivers passing the speed requirements to qualify: three laps at 115 mph, three laps at 120 mph then a further three laps at 140 mph. Maserati arrived the next day but the two cars which Behra practiced with suffered handling problems when they were fitted with larger diameter Firestone tyres. They chose not to return the following day, joining the already withdrawn Ferrari, which left the race without any F1 cars. Amusingly, one of the USAC drivers, Jimmy Bryan, had ten $10 notes blow out of the top pocket of his overalls during practice so stopped at the foot of the banking and climbed out to retrieve them. During qualification on the Friday, the USAC teams continued to lower their lap times with Bettenhausen taking pole position with a lap time of 53.7 seconds, averaging 177.045 mph, which was faster than the pole speed at that year’s Indy 500. On race day on Sunday, temperatures at the circuit reached 40C (104F). Although starting at the back the three Jaguars were able to take an early lead due to their use of a four-speed gearbox, allowing them to out accelerate the USAC roadsters with two-speed gearboxes. Fairman led the first lap before the roadsters were able to build enough speed to catch and pass but though Bettenhausen was eventually leading he lost the lead during the fourth lap with a broken throttle linkage. At the end of the 63 laps, Bryan won and Troy was fifth. Following the break, the field started the second heat and Troy took an early lead, followed closely by O’Connor, Sachs, Bryan and Fairman. He was eventually caught and passed by Bryan and the two finished first and second at the flag. In the final heat, he and Bryan took an early lead though Troy came home ahead of him at the finish. In the final results, Bryan was declared the winner and received $35,000 in prize money. Bryan averaged 160 mph over the full race distance while Bettenhausen also recorded a lap speed of 176.818 mph, breaking a closed circuit speed record.
He returned to contest the second running at Monza in 1958 while in USAC races that year he was fourteenth with a Viking Craft entered Kuzma at Sacramento though retired a Buick powered Kurtis at Riverside. Several F1 teams entered at Monza, with Ferrari deciding to compete after the Automobile Club of Italy announced that the race was a required event for teams vying for a cash award for the most successful Italian constructor. Once again, USAC teams were transported on ships from New York City shortly after the Indy 500, with Alfa Romeo providing trucks for transporting the teams once they arrived in Genoa. Ten drivers (with Troy in an Agajanian Kuzma) travelled from America to represent USAC while two extra USAC cars were there for Fangio and Trintignant, but set up and run by the American crews. Ferrari brought two cars plus Luigi Chinetti’s North American Racing Team entered a third Ferrari, to be driven by Harry Schell (the car had been driven in hill climbs by Carroll Shelby, but it had never been raced, although it had achieved 176mph during a Daytona Speed Week). Maserati had an Indy type racer built for Moss, which had been designed to use the larger Firestone tyres. A two-speed gearbox was also used and in deference to the sponsorship from the Italian Eldorado Ice Cream Company the car was painted white with their logo written across the side. Jaguar utilised a Lister sports car chassis, which had been modified into a single-seater body style, and though Dunlop tyres remained on the front the rear was adapted to handle the larger Firestone tyres. The team also entered two standard Jaguar D-Types as they had done the previous year, although these were also altered to adapt to the oval circuit. Qualifying began on Friday, with Fangio setting early laps and Musso’s Ferrari recorded the fastest time for the Europeans, though when qualifying continued on Saturday the Americans were soon topping the time charts. On race day, Fangio had to miss the first two heats after his team discovered the Offenhauser engine had a cracked piston. Musso and Sachs battled each other for the first few laps, with the crowd enjoying watching Musso taking considerable amounts of the banking on full opposite lock. By the eleventh lap, Rathmann was in the lead (where he stayed till the finish) while Musso and Sachs continued to dispute second place vigorously until on lap 20 Sachs’ engine threw a con-rod. Several laps later Musso pitted the Ferrari, suffering from the methanol exhaust fumes, and Hawthorn took it back out. At the end of lap 53, Veith passed Moss for third place but shortly afterwards Troy passed both of them as he got a tow by tucking behind a car they were lapping. Unfortunately he then had to come in the pits for fuel and dropped to seventh, where he remained till the flag. Following an hour and a half break, the drivers started the second heat in the finishing order of the previous race and Rathmann led the field at the start and remained in front throughout. On lap 19 Musso again pitted after suffering from the fumes and handed over to Phil Hill. Moss, Veith, Bryan and Troy had all been fighting for second place and Troy began closing on Moss, and there followed a very close battle between four drivers from lap 31 until lap 56, with the cars slipstreaming past each other on the long straights. On lap 57, Moss dropped back to fifth, with Troy crossing the finishing line ahead of him in fourth place. Eleven cars were in the final heat, joined by Fangio and Gregory who had both repaired their cars. Rathmann once again led at the start, followed by Bryan and Foyt but Fangio’s car retired early after his fuel pump failed. Alhough Moss had been the last off the grid, being unable to move off in first gear and having to use top instead, he began an impressive comeback. Hawthorn suffered the same methanol inhalation problems as Musso and handed his car to Hill. Moss suffered steering failure while running fourth and crashed into the guard rails at the top of the banking on lap 41 while Troy retired the Kuzma due to a broken fuel line. After winning all three heats Rathmann was declared the race winner and averaged a speed of 166.756 mph over the 500 miles. However, this would be its last running as although the two races attracted several European teams, the Automobile Club of Milan was unable to make a profit on it and the event never returned.
Thanks to a friendship with Luigi Musso, who he first met in Monza, he had an invitation to drive a Scuderia Centro Sud Maserati 250F in the French GP. Scuderia Centro Sud had started in 1956 as a small privateer team created by Guglielmo Dei and they fielded a number of Maserati 250Fs in Grands Prix in 1958. Early July saw him at Rouen alongside Carroll Shelby and Gerino Gerini, with Gerini starting on the sixth row in fifteenth position and Shelby and Troy seventeenth and eighteenth. At the start Hawthorn overtook Schell for the lead, though Troy was a little slow through the first lap while Gerini and Shelby drove steadily, hoping to move forward as attrition began to take its toll through the 50 laps. On lap nine Shelby was out with an expired engine and eventually Brooks, Trintignant, Hill, Schell, Lewis-Evans and Behra also retired while Gerini and Troy continued steadily. Troy finished tenth (behind Gerini) having driven a smart race in a car no longer the class of the field. It was also the last F1 race for Juan Manuel Fangio, who went on to finish fourth, and it was said his rivals emptied his hotel room of its furniture and replaced it with Jean Behra’s Citroen, which had been manhandled up the side of the hotel. Sadly the weekend was marred by Musso’s fatal accident after his Ferrari slid off the track, struck a ditch and somersaulted a number of times into a field. When the rescuers arrived they found him still breathing but though he was airlifted by helicopter to Reims hospital, he succumbed to his head and internal injuries later that day. Troy entered a second race, at the start of August at the daunting Nurburgring and the field would feature a number of different makes though Centro Sud were the only team running Maseratis. Joining him were Jo Bonnier and Hans Herrmann but though he took part in practice he suffered engine problems and, with not being able to set a time, he could not start the race. Herrmann and Bonnier started twentieth and twenty first but Bonnier crashed out early while Herrmann was running around fifteenth place before engine troubles ended his race. Sadly, the race would see another fatality, while Collins was battling Brooks and Hawthorn. Pushing hard in his Ferrari he slid into fencing and he was thrown out and hit a tree but though he was taken to hospital he never regained consciousness and died in hospital that evening.
Contesting USAC races in 1963 he started with fifth at Trenton with Stearly Motor’s Elder and twelfth at Indiapolis with a Jim Robbins Seat Belt Kuzma while three outings with Dayton Steel Wheel’s Watson saw fourteenth at Milwaukee and fifth and third at the Trenton 150 and Trenton 200. He continued with the Dayton Steel Wheel’s Watson the following year though in his first race at Trenton his roadster overturned and skidded along on its top for a considerable distance. Less than a month afterward at Indianapolis, he was drawing level with Eddie Sachs but came across fellow driver Davey MacDonald’s stricken car blazing in front of him. But though he avoided it was said he felt the heat and heard the concussion as Sachs hit the car with fatal consequences for both. The accident halted the race but after the re-start, he spun off and retired after 99 laps. He followed this with fourth and eighth at Milwaukee and Trenton but though entered in an August race at Milwaukee, he withdrew and at the age of 34 Troy decided to quit racing. A natural salesman, he went on to build a thriving motorcycle and snowmobile business in Detroit though after learning to fly, he moved to Venice, Florida, and ran an aircraft brokerage business. In a video series ‘The Indy 500: A race for Heroes’, he declared he was not mature enough to handle everything that comes with being an Indianapolis 500 champion and stated “it was too much, too soon.” He was later able to turn his life around and stated “I’m more proud of giving up drinking and gambling and all that other stuff than I am of winning the 500.”
