NASCAR great Rusty Wallace plans return to racing at X Games

Aside from participating in an occasional test session, when Rusty Wallace stepped away from his NASCAR career at the end of the 2005 season, he left competitive racing behind.

Nearly a decade later, however, he has decided to get back behind the wheel.

Last month, Wallace announced he will compete in the off-road truck racing event that is part of this year’s X Games, scheduled for June 4-7 in Austin, Texas.

The off-road truck event at the X Games is one of 15 stops on the 2015 season of former NASCAR driver Robby Gordon’s Stadium Super Truck Series, where off-road trucks compete on pavement and dirt on a course that includes ramps and jumps.

It certainly will be a venture unlike any Wallace, 58, undertook in NASCAR, where he was inducted into the sport’s Hall of Fame in 2013.

The Observer caught up with Wallace to talk about his upcoming return to competitive racing.

Q: How did this come about?

A. I got a phone call from ESPN and they asked me if I’d compete in this event. They’ve talked to me about it for like three years now and I’ve been saying I didn’t feel comfortable doing it with my work in television. So when my television deal ended, they called me again and asked me. So, I called Robby Gordon to see what he thought. Me being a stock car guy, I wanted to know if he thought this was something I could do. I went out to his shop, I did a bunch of jumping in a truck and really felt like I could do this. He also offered to be my personal coach. So after all that, I was ready to go. I’ve done NASCAR my whole life – I love it – but this is just a big fun deal for me.

Q: You’ve likely been approached to do a lot of different racing ventures since your retirement. Why did this one interest you?

A. I think a lot of had to do with talking to Rich Feinberg (who now oversees ESPN’s X Games TV production), my old boss. He didn’t do anything special for me. The trucks cost money to lease, then you have to find a sponsor. When Rich called he said it would be a big deal, and he believed I could do well in it. Robby was really excited and pumped up about be doing it. He was really fired up about it.

Q: A lot of NASCAR drivers decide to step away and for one reason or another but later they elect to come back to race. You pretty much made a clean break. How did you compensate for the competitiveness of racing once you stopped driving?

A. I think one of the things that got me through it was the business end of it. I never thought I would have eight car dealerships by now – I’ve got two new ones coming out of the ground. That business has just gotten so big for me in Tennessee. That’s where I make all my money now, basically. Doing the MRN (radio) stuff this year has been a lot of fun – I can be Rusty Wallace, I can talk about what I want, as fast as I want and as long as I want. Now on the competitive side, that’s the one little thing that I’ve always missed and one of the reasons I’ve jumped on the off-road truck stuff. I don’t see how you can come back into NASCAR and compete occasionally because you really have to be ‘all in’ to be successful. With this deal, I can go make some laps and have fun.

Q: You spent several years after your retirement doing TV work for ESPN. Now, you’re working on the radio side with MRN. How is it different, and do you like one more than the other?

A. It’s not even close to the same. I love being on TV, but the MRN stuff is just more fun. We can talk about whatever we want, we’re not counted down all the time, we don’t have a tight TV window to operate in. A lot of television is there is a story you’re going to comment on, a story you’re going to talk about and you have this much time to talk about it. It’s not that way in radio. The other thing I like about the radio guys is every single one of them has been in the ditch and all in NASCAR. There are no temporary guys brought in for one race; they’re ‘all in’ and they all know well the subjects they are talking about.

Q: So is this X Games appearance more about having fun or more about winning?

A. I’m expecting to have a lot of fun, but I’ll say this: I’m going down there to bring home a medal.

This story was originally published May 11, 2015 at 9:04 AM with the headline "NASCAR great Rusty Wallace plans return to racing at X Games."