Troy Ruttman, youngest winner at Indianapolis

Troy Ruttman won the 1952 Indianapolis 500 at 22, still the youngest winner of the race, and later started a European Grand Prix for Maserati.

Troy Ruttman was born in Mooreland, Oklahoma, on 11 March 1930, and was racing by the age of 15, when he won a roadster race in San Bernardino, California, in the family car. He became the California Roadster Association champion in 1947 and 1948, won many midget races, and in 1949 moved to the Midwest to race on the AAA sprint car and championship circuits.

In the 1950s the Indianapolis 500 was part of the World Championship, so his first World Championship start came at the Speedway in 1950, when he was 20. That made him, for a time, the youngest driver to have started a championship race. He finished 15th that day and 23rd a year later.

His breakthrough came in 1952. Driving a Kuzma Offenhauser for J. C. Agajanian, Ruttman won the Indianapolis 500 at the age of 22, and he remains the youngest winner of the race. He was runner up in that year's AAA National Championship. An injury in a sprint car crash later in 1952 kept him out for a season and a half, and he never quite returned to the same level, though he finished fourth at Indianapolis in 1954.

In 1958 he crossed the Atlantic and drove a Maserati 250F for Scuderia Centro Sud, finishing tenth in the French Grand Prix at Reims, one of the first Indianapolis regulars to start a European round of the championship. His World Championship record shows 8 starts, 1 win and 1 podium. He later raced stock cars, winning the 1956 USAC Short Track title, and he died on 19 May 1997.

0 world titles, 1 wins, 0 pole positions, 8 starts.

Teams

Victories

• Indianapolis 500 1952