Rusty Wallace

Background

About Rusty Wallace

For over 40 years, racing legend Rusty Wallace has delighted racing fans not only with his hard-nosed and aggressive approach to racing, but also with an unmatched personality and charisma. Wallace—the 1989 NASCAR Cup Series Champion, 1984 Rookie of the Year and 55-time race winner—will go into history as one of NASCAR’s finest drivers. For 16 straight seasons, he won at least one race in NASCAR’s Cup Series, marking the third-longest such streak in history. At the time of his retirement in 2005, his 55 victories marked the eighth-best all-time total and his nearly laps led ranked seventh all-time. In 1991, he bested a bevy of the world’s greatest drivers for the IROC XV title, becoming the only driver in history to win three of the series’ four events in a single season. Wallace’s on-track success has been widely recognized. He is a member of the NASCAR Hall of Fame, the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) Hall of Fame, the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America, the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame and the St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame. As a main protagonist during NASCAR’s meteoric commercial rise of the 1990s and Wallace is often credited as being a catalyst behind the mainstream appeal the sport enjoys today. In 2024, NASCAR awarded him with one of its most prestigious accolades—the Buddy Shuman Award—given for lifetime efforts and contributions to advance the sport of stock car racing. Rusty’s more recent undertakings have allowed him to continue putting his knowledge and charisma to work. In 2006, he was named Lead Auto Racing Analyst for ABC and ESPN, maintaining that role through their exit from NASCAR at the end of 2014. Currently, he serves as Lead Analyst for MRN Radio—the Voice of NASCAR—where he is heard on more than 700 affiliates nationwide, as well as on Sirius XM Radio. Wallace is also active in other business pursuits. He is the principal stakeholder in the Rusty Wallace Automotive Group, which consists of nine new car dealerships featuring brands such as Chevrolet, Ford, GMC, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Nissan and Toyota. He also served as the lead designer of the 7/8-mile Iowa Speedway near Des Moines. The facility currently hosts rounds of NASCAR’s Cup and Xfinity Series, as well as the Indycar Series. Rusty currently serves on the board of The NASCAR Foundation—the sport’s foremost charity initiative. In that role, he leads the foundation’s development committee, charged with fundraising for the foundation’s mission of helping children live, learn and play.