Interview: Lloyd Ruby

Someone once said that Indy car drivers would be lost if they had to turn right as well as left. They also said that at Le Mans they’d never find their behinds with both hands when it got dark or if it rained. Obviously, they never met Lloyd Ruby. During his career, Ruby drove anything and everything he could get his hands on from motorcycles to Chevy-powered Maserati specials, to Genies, to Ford GT40s, in addition to just about any kind of Indy car you could imagine. From front-engined roadsters to the later mid-engined Eagles, Ruby competed with the best of them. He started racing motorcycles on dirt tracks and moved from there to midgets racing on dirt.

From his home state of Texas to Oklahoma to Missouri, Ruby fought the good fight with the other legendary dirt trackers of the day, from Don Branson to A.J. Foyt and Jim Hurtibise. He also competed in sports car races, his first being in 1957 when he drove a Maserati at Sebring. That got him hooked on road racing, but he would drive anything anywhere on any road racing track. In his first year at Indy, in 1960, he thought he had a chance to win the race, even though there was a knock-down drag-out fight going on at the time between Jim Rathmann and Rodger Ward, but he had to retire 12 laps before the end of the race for fuel.