TROY RUTTMAN - USAC HALL OF FAME CLASS OF 2018

Troy Ruttman, of Mooreland, Okla., earned international recognition as the 1952 winner of the Indianapolis 500 Mile Race. At his 1952 age of 22 years and 80 days he remains the youngest winner of the “500.” He won his first race at age 15 in 1945 and two years later became the California Roadster Association Champion. He repeated that title in 1948 and also won the 1948 United Racing Association Blue Circuit (Offy) crown. In 1952 he finished as runner-up to Chuck Stevenson for the AAA National Championship. He was USAC’s 1956 Short Track Stock Car Champion and in 1963 finished third behind Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt in a NASCAR championship race at Riverside, Calif. A 1992 inductee into the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame, he also was an inductee into the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame in 1993, the West Coast Stock Car Hall of Fame in 2002, the National Midget Auto Racing Hall of Fame in 2003 and the Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2005. A spectacular Sprint racer on the famed Midwestern high banks, he won the third leg of USAC’s “Race of Two Worlds” Championship race at the Monza (Italy) Autodrome in 1957. He died in 1997.