Who Was the Youngest Driver to Win the Indianapolis 500?
Who Was the Youngest Driver to Win the Indy 500?
It was Bill Vukovich’s bad luck in the 1952 Indianapolis 500 which handed the victory to 22-year-old Troy Ruttman. Assured of victory, the official party was making its way to Victory Circle to greet Vukovich. He had exited the third turn at 130 mph when the steering shaft on his Keck Injection Engineering Special broke. The car went high into the turn but Vukovich was uninjured.
Ruttman was only 19 seconds behind Vukovich when the steering shaft broke. Averaging 128.922 mph, Ruttman piloted his racer to victory beating Jim Rathmann by 4.04 seconds. In winning the race, Ruttman led 44 laps and set a new speed record.
Jim Rathmann could have easily had his face on the Borg-Warner Trophy. On Ruttman’s first fueling stop, his car was in a flash fire. In the middle of the race, the car lost a balance weight from one of the front wheels causing steering issues. Then as the race ran down, Ruttman was running on very worn tires. As he crossed the finish line, he was riding on the last set of tires which were used in his qualifying run.
Born in Mooreland Oklahoma on March 11, 1930. He got his first speeding ticket at age nine. Ruttman began his racing career at age 15 in California when he sneaked his family’s Model A Ford to a San Bernardino track. Because of his young age, he borrowed his cousin’s birth certificate and lied about his age. He was 15 when he won his first race, the Ash Can Derby, at the Gate City Speedway in San Bernardino.[4] Over the next three years, he won the California Roadster Association title twice and the 1948 United Racing Association “Blue” midget title.
He first appeared at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1949. He was only 19 years old, two years younger than the rules permitted at IMS. He later commented, “I had to fudge to get in. I had to produce a birth certificate. Ralph Wayne Ruttman was my cousin, and I used his. They asked me why I went by Troy and I told them it was a nickname.” He subsequently corrected the record when he turned 21. He finished 12th in 1949, 15th in 1950 and 23rd in 1951.
In 1952, he was at the wheel of the Zink Special owned by J. C. Agajanian. He was the teammate of Walt Faulkner who had been assigned to the car. It was through a little bit of chicanery that he was in that car. “I wanted to drive [Faulkner’s ] car so bad. It was a new Kuzma-bult dirt car. Mine was the car Faulker had won the pole with in 1951. I just knew I could win the race if only I could somehow get Faulkner’s ride.” His opportunity came when Agajanian gave Faulkner and Ruttman a new Chrysler sedan with the proviso that they couldn’t sell or give them away for six months. Ruttman later recalled, “He said he’d fire us if we sold the car before six months. I figured if I could get Walt to sell his, I would get his [race] car. I stashed mine in a garage in Indy and made sure Walt saw a lot of me without the Chrysler. I hinted around that I’d sold it.” After hearing that Ruttman sold his car, Faulkner followed suit. Ruttman continued the story, “The next time I saw Aggie, I said, ‘How come you let Walt sell his car and you told me not to?’ He fired Walt on the spot.” Ruttman got to drive the car in the Indianapolis 500.
Between 1949 and August 1952, Ruttman won 37 main racing events. His promising career was put on hold when he crashed during an August 1952 race in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, severely injuring his arm. It took him eighteen months to return to a race car. Even though he drove for twelve more years, he commented that “the accident ended his career.”
Ruttman drove in twelve Indianapolis 500s, finishing fourth in 1954. His final race was in 1964 when he finished 18th. Not only was Ruttman the youngest driver to win the Indianapolis 500, he also was the first Indy car winner to drive in a Formula 1 race at Reims, France in 1958. He retired from racing at age 34 in 1964.
Mooreland, Oklahoma planned to honor its famous son in June 1997 and Ruttman planned to attend. He died on May 19, 1997 in Arizona from lung cancer.