A Letter to NASCAR Hall of Fame Voters About Ricky Rudd
Dear Hall Voters,
I see why Ricky Rudd didn’t crack the top five on your ballot last year. Twenty-three wins. One Brickyard 400. A low winning percentage.
On those facts alone, Rudd may look like a borderline Hall of Famer.
But those facts shouldn’t define Ricky Rudd.
When questioned last year about what makes a driver a Hall of Famer, Richard Petty talked about longevity. It’s not enough to make your mark as a great driver for a few years, it has to be sustained.
Few were greater for longer than Rudd, who finished in the top 10 in the Cup series standings — get this — 19 times.
To put that in perspective, the only drivers in the modern era to do it more are Jeff Gordon (21) and Dale Earnhardt (20). It’s five more seasons than NASCAR Hall of Famers Bobby Labonte and Dale Earnhardt Jr. did it combined.
The 19 top 10s is also the career output of three Hall of Fame nominees — Neil Bonnett, Harry Gant and Jeff Burton — who are competing with Rudd on this year’s ballot. Bonnett, who you voted ahead of Rudd last year, did it 16 less times.
Career NASCAR Cup Series top 10 points finishes for notable drivers:
- Jeff Gordon 21
- Dale Earnhardt 20
- Ricky Rudd 19
- Darrell Waltrip 18
- Rusty Wallace 17
- Mark Martin 17
- Terry Labonte 17
- Kevin Harvick 17
- Jimmie Johnson 15
- Bill Elliott 14
- Denny Hamlin 14
- Kyle Busch 13
- Tony Stewart 13
- Matt Kenseth 13
- Carl Edwards 8
- Bobby Labonte 7
- Dale Earnhardt Jr. 7
- Kyle Larson 6
- Martin Truex Jr. 6
- Tabulated using Racing-Reference.info
When considering 2023 candidates, you likely browsed each of their Hall of Fame webpages. “Tough. As. Nails. There is no other way to describe Ricky Rudd” his page reads. He was. We can all point to the tape on Rudd’s face at Daytona in 1984 or to him laying in victory lane with second degree burns after winning at Martinsville in 1998.
But that grit may be overshadowing a more important factor to his Hall candidacy: Ricky Rudd was a really good Cup driver for a really, really long time.
I’ve been a fan since I was 4 years old. It was quite the ride. I marveled at his tenacity and at times he downright overachieved. But I also coped with perplexing career moves from a NASCAR nomad and so much late-race heartbreak, hardly ever of his own doing.
You’re probably flashing back to when he was issued the black flag instead of the checkered after turning Davey Allison at Sonoma in 1991 — only because his name wasn’t Earnhardt. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
There was the blown tire while leading with six to go at Pocono, a loose wheel while tracking down the leader late at Dover, the “Rubberhead” lapped car that spun him while dominating another race at Dover and his encore at Richmond — just in 2001 and 2002 alone.
Rudd didn’t win as much as he should have, but he was the guy the best drivers in the sport had to beat for decades. He was Dale Earnhardt’s closest contender for the title in 1991 and chased Gordon for the title 10 years later. He collected 194 top-five finishes — more than Hall of Famers Tony Stewart, Bill Elliott, Matt Kenseth, Terry Labonte and Dale Jarrett.
Despite his nomadic existence, he proved he could win for anyone. He did it for Richard Childress, Bud Moore, Kenny Bernstein, Rick Hendrick, Robert Yates and himself. The latter may be the most impressive. He left Hendrick Motorsports one year after they added a mustached kid named Gordon and only a couple of years before they exploded into the most dominant team in the sport.
Timing was never his thing. He started Rudd Performance Motorsports at a moment when well-financed multi-car operations — like Hendrick Motorsports — were showing single-car entities that they couldn’t compete. Yet, he still won six times from 1994–1998. For comparison, Awesome Bill Elliott won zero races driving for his own team from 1995–2000.
Even when he wasn’t in great cars, Rudd just found a way. He won a race for 16 consecutive seasons from 1983 to 1998. This would be an amazing feat in modern day NASCAR, but it’s no match for doing it in the 1980s and 90s as speeds climbed and cars began taking flight. Few drivers avoided missing time with serious injuries and some lost their lives.
Rudd was not spared. Most famously, he flipped end over end through the Daytona grass during the 1984 Busch Clash, his arm and head hanging out the window as the nose of his №15 faced the earth. Maybe he did have some luck.
A swollen-eyed and concussed Rudd taped his eyes open and fitted into a flak jacket to race the next week in the Daytona 500 and finished seventh. He won the following week at Richmond, once again in the flak jacket with his eyes still black and face puffy. He truly was tough as nails.
When he was named NASCAR’s Iron Man in 2002 for making 656 consecutive starts, it meant something — more than any NASCAR Iron Man record-breaking has meant since or will again. The same element of danger no longer exists — a credit to NASCAR’s evolution and higher prioritization for safety.
So, yeah, Rudd’s bio pages never quite do him justice. He won 23 races, including the Brickyard 400, and started the second-most races in Cup history. But that doesn’t define him.
Ricky Rudd was one hell of a racecar driver for an for an astoundingly long time and I can’t wait to be there one day when he’s rightfully inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
