Indianapolis 500 : Veterans, Getting Better With Age, Hanging On

Johnny Rutherford says he has it all figured out.

“Old age and treachery will beat youth and inexperience every time,” says the 50-year-old Texan who hopes to become only the third four-time winner of the Indianapolis 500 this year.

Rutherford admits it’s an old line. But he insists there is some truth in it.

In most other sports, athletes who are still playing at 40 are compared to archeological artifacts--valuable but rare.

Occasionally there will be a Tommy John or Phil Niekro in baseball, a George Blanda in football or a Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in basketball. But they are special cases.

This month at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, besides Rutherford, there are no less than half a dozen relics of another age in auto racing hoping to make the lineup for the May 29 running of the Indy 500.

And they are still a competitive group.

Four-time Indy winners A.J. Foyt and defending champion Al Unser are 53 and 48, respectively, while two-time winner Gordon Johncock is 51, and 1969 winner Mario Andretti is 48. Dick Simon, whose sixth-place finish here last year was his best in 16 Indy starts, is the oldest at 54. George Snider, Foyt’s longtime friend and Indy teammate, is 47 and trying to make his 23rd Indy start.

When this group began racing, there were few old Indy-car drivers.

Until the early 1970s, when a nearly fail-safe fuel cell was introduced to the Indy-car set, almost every crash resulted in fire and injuries, often fatal.

Beyond that, until the last 15 years, the race cars themselves did little to protect the driver.

“There weren’t any old guys around years ago because they either were killed, broke up or retired early so they weren’t killed or broke up,” Foyt said. “You never heard of nobody 50 years old driving a race car back then.”

The last generation of cars bore little resemblance to the aerodynamic machines made of space-age materials that now keep the drivers relatively safe in a tub, the pod-like central core of the cars.

And now that drivers set up retirement plans and talk about the distant future, some tend to stick around a lot longer than veterans in other sports.

“I can’t talk for other people, but I still enjoy getting into the race car and competing,” said Andretti. “And I think perhaps experience works for you.

“If a person is physically fit and keeps a certain edge, there’s no reason he can’t keep on driving. After all, we’re not all total wrecks in our late 40s.

“The guys who do retire earlier usually just get their belly full of it and get out. It’s really an individual situation.”

Johncock, who came out of a two-year retirement last May to drive at Indy, said, “I’d be watching a race on TV and say to myself, ‘I can still be out there doing it. Why am I here?’

“It’s not the money or anything like that,” he added. “There’s just the feeling that you can still compete, still win races. Why sit at home?”

Rutherford said, “The money is better, the cars are better, there are more competitive teams, there is TV and the sport is growing. Those are all good reasons to stick around as long as you can still be competitive.

“When I make speeches around the country, I like to say about the other sports that I’ve found out those guys all have to run everywhere they go. In my sport, I get to drive,” he joked.

“But, really, an athlete in those other sports can wind up with bum knees or other physical problems, or he can just get flat tired of running the length of the field or the playing floor.

“Racing is very physical, but as long as you keep your good eyesight and keep your tone and shape, you can do it. When things are right, I can still get around this place just as fast as anybody out there.”

All the older drivers agree, though, that experience is the key word for aging racers.

“It becomes a challenge to run against the youngsters, and experience is the greatest ally for us older drivers,” Rutherford explained.