Rusty Wallace, Roger Penske, Jack Roush and Robert Yates make up impressive hall of fame class
Roger Penske, Jack Roush, Robert Yates and Rusty Wallace at the NMPA Hall of Fame induction ceremony. // Sam Cranston, NASCAR Illustrated
Rusty Wallace is one of the greatest drivers in NASCAR history, having won 55 Cup races and the 1989 championship.
But when Wallace looked to his right on Saturday night prior to the National Motorsports Press Association Hall of Fame induction ceremony, he was in awe of the men who sat beside him.
To his immediate right was car owner Roger Penske, who has 61 NASCAR Cup victories, 37 with Wallace behind the wheel of his cars.
Next to him was team owner Jack Roush, who has won 116 Cup races and two championships.
And next to him was Robert Yates, one of the sport’s greatest mechanics and engine builders, who won 57 races and the 1999 Cup championship.
Wallace, who reluctantly retired in 2005, was in awe of the company around him.
“I stick with my decision I made back in 2005 to get out of the car, but things like this really make it special, especially with the group I’m sitting with,” Wallace said at a news conference prior to the induction ceremonies. “To be inducted with this crowd is really special to me.”
Wallace, Penske, Roush and Yates were inducted into the NMPA Hall of Fame Saturday night. They are four of the most recognizable names in NASCAR and were among the sport’s most successful competitors during the 1980s and ’90s.
Wallace burst onto the scene in 1984 and won the 1989 championship with car owner Raymond Beadle. It was with Penske, though, that he became a superstar, winning 10 races in 1993, eight in 1994 and battling Dale Earnhardt for the championship throughout the early- and mid-1990s.
“Rusty was a great part of our success over the years,” said Penske, who is also one of the winningest car owners in IndyCar racing, having won the Indy 500 15 times. “We never had a driver who was better for our sponsors and produced more on the race track than Rusty did.”
Roush was one of most successful team owners in sports-car racing before moving to NASCAR in 1988 with driver Mark Martin. He has fielded some of the most successful Cup teams and drivers of the past two decades, bringing such stars as Martin, Matt Kenseth, Greg Biffle, Kurt Busch and Carl Edwards to the sport. He won championships in 2003 and 2004 with Kenseth and Busch.
“I am especially proud and honored to be considered with the people around the table here,” Roush said. “It’s been a treat of my life to be involved in this industry, which was something I had no dream of as a young man. It just kind of evolved for me as I took one racing challenge after another and was able to generate the cash to participate at that level.”
No one was more humbled, though, than Yates, a master engine builder who invested his life savings into a Cup team for young driver Davey Allison in 1989. Ironically, Yates said he chose Allison over Wallace for his first driver.
Yates went on to win the Daytona 500 three times as a car owner and won the 1999 Cup championship with Dale Jarrett before turning his operation over to his son, Doug, in 2007.
“I’m honored and I was actually shocked [to be selected for the hall of fame],” Yates said. “When I look at y’all, I would say they probably wouldn’t vote for me. I probably wasn’t the friendliest person, I usually had my head under the car or the engine or doing something.”
