Loyal Scaiaholics will recall my rich history with auto racing. And by “rich history,” I mean, “The marketing people at the McLaren dealership let me, against their better judgment, take one of their cars for a test drive.”
They weren’t satisfied with that, so they brought three-time Indy 500 winner Johnny Rutherford in to talk with me. This year marks the 50th anniversary of his first win.
Rutherford thought he was coming to take a look at McLaren’s North American headquarters and reminisce about his career.
In actuality, he was coming to receive a street-legal version of his McLaren.
Rutherford won three Indy 500s, so it’s possible his time in a race car was more competitive than mine. He had started on the inside of the 9th row for that first win, so he says he didn’t expect a chance to catch AJ Foyt, who was on the pole.
A few years back, the Scaia Fam took some race cars for a spin. It’s also possible I started next to my brother that day, not Al Unser, which probably would have been more intimidating.
In that clip, he explains, “Well, you know Foyt…” In fact, I do not know Foyt, but I like his explanation of their back-and-forth during the race: If the fans don’t like this, they need to go on home.
He says he doesn’t call Indianapolis Motor Speedway the Brickyard. Instead, it’s the Old Lady.
We can all benefit from that message: We need to be ready to adjust because the Old Lady of Life is always going to be throwing us curves. He dealt with those curves and won three Indy 500s.
In fact, he won his last Indy 500 when he was 42 and continued driving until he was 50, so I’m still young enough to add Indianapolis 500 champion to my list of post-radio careers. In addition to taking race cars for a spin, the Scaia family also runs an Indy 500 betting pool. Rutherford and I also talked about that: We may not remember the winner from a given year, but we have precious memories, him of working as a team to accomplish a goal of precise skill and engineering, and me gambling on the race together as a family.
But he’s not planning to drive the car back to Indianapolis. I doublechecked.
