Rusty Wallace to run in the X Games
Rusty Wallace is returning to competitive driving, but it’s not in NASCAR.
The 58-year-old NASCAR Hall-of-Famer is going to compete in the X Games in June in an off-road truck.
“I honestly miss driving a car a little bit,” Wallace told The Associated Press. “ESPN brought up this possibility and I thought, ‘Why not? Let’s go knock the cobwebs off and try this.’ I know that I stopped driving too early. I think I could have gone another three years.
“But at that point, I was really getting burned out on all the travel. I was irritable. I got the opportunity to work for ESPN and I said to myself, ‘If I don’t do this, someone else will.’ So that’s the path I took. I still struggle with not racing, not a whole lot, but a little, and this was a good opportunity to go have some fun.”
Wallace retired from NASCAR after the 2005 season and was replaced in the No. 2 car by Kurt Busch. He was an analyst for ESPN’s NASCAR coverage until the network didn’t renew its broadcast contract after the 2014 season.
He has 55 career NASCAR wins and has turned to another former NACSAR winner for off-road racing advice recently: Robby Gordon.
Gordon told the AP that Wallace has already driven a truck. The trucks in the event are Gordon’s.
And while Wallace’s return to racing is interesting, there’s another fun note in the AP story. Wallace, who is now doing radio work for MRN’s Sprint Cup Series broadcasts, spends half his year in Mexico. We imagine beach time with Rusty Wallace could be a riot.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
