SEASON IN REVIEW
Upland, California driver Joe Ruttman picked up his first LASTCAR Cup Series Championship in 1982, scoring three last-place finishes in twenty-nine starts during a thirty-race-season. Ruttman edged Rick Newsom for the title by a single bottom-five finish, 5-4. Newsom started just eight races that season, but Ruttman didn’t break the tie in Bottom Fives until the season finale at Riverside, California, where he finished 40th in the 42-car field in a one-off start for owner Harry Ranier.
Ruttman was competing in his sixth season on the Cup Series tour, but had been racing since the age of 18 in 1963. After he scored his first two top-five finishes during a partial 1981 season, Ruttman was slated to run the full season in 1982 for prolific owner Jim “J.D.” Stacy. Despite a strong 3rd-place finish in the season-opening Daytona 500 on February 14 following a career-best 2nd in the 1981 finale at Riverside, California, Ruttman quit the team and was replaced by Tim Richmond for the April 4 race at Darlington. Ruttman missed the race and started the next event in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, climbing aboard the #75 Buicks and Pontiacs prepared by RahMoc Enterprises, a ride vacated by struggling third-year driver Gary Balough. It was with this team that Ruttman scored his three last-place finishes.
Ruttman’s first last-place finish came on July 4 in the Firecracker 400 in Daytona Beach, Florida, victim of a broken fuel pump after six laps. It was the first last-place run of Ruttman’s career. Their next last-place finish came four races later in the Champion Spark Plug 400 in Brooklyn, Michigan, where this time an oil pump knocked Ruttman out after two laps of the August 22 race. Finish number three was just three races later at Richmond, Virginia on September 12, where Ruttman qualified on the outside-pole for the Wrangler Sanfor-Set 400 only to lose the engine after 35 laps. RahMoc’s #75 gained sponsorship from Pet Dairy at Charlotte in May, but the team struggled to find consistency all year long. Despite all the struggles, Ruttman finished 16th in points with five Top Fives and seven Top Tens.
Following his LASTCAR title-clinching run for Harry Ranier in the 1982 finale, Ruttman moved to Ron Benfield’s team in 1983, scoring his first two poles that season. Late in 1984, he moved to the newly-established Morgan-McClure Motorsports team in Abington, Virginia, a program that would go on to score three Daytona 500 victories - without Ruttman. By the start of the 1986 season, Ruttman was on the move to another start-up team ready to make its debut in the Daytona 500 - King Racing, founded by drag racing legend Kenny Bernstein.
OTHER LASTCAR HEADLINES
Several big names scored the first last-place finishes in 1982.
In the season-opening Daytona 500 on February 14, rookie Geoffrey Bodine was making his eighth career start when his #23 Bahre Racing Buick was involved in a bizarre accident. On Lap 4, third-place driver Bobby Allison’s rear bumper flew off exiting turn four. The bumper struck Joe Milikan’s car and sent him spinning in the middle of the pack, wrecking at least three other cars, including Bodine’s. Allison recovered from the mishap to win his second Daytona 500.
Finally, in the season finale at Riverside, California on November 21, 31-year-old Dale Earnhardt scored his first last-place finish in the Winston Western 500. Earnhardt qualified 7th in the Bud Moore-prepared #15 Wrangler Ford, but suffered an oil leak after just eight laps. Earnhardt would drive one more season for Moore before his fateful move to Richard Childress Racing’s #3 in 1984. Earnhardt finished 2nd to Cale Yarborough that day, kicking off a nineteen-year relationship that would result in 65 of Earnhardt’s 76 career victories and six of his seven championships.
CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS
1st) Rick Newsom [4 B5s], Joe Ruttman [5 B5s] (3)
2nd) Slick Johnson, J.D. McDuffie, Lake Speed (2)
3rd) John Anderson, Buddy Baker, Gary Balough, Geoffrey Bodine, John Callis, Dale Earnhardt, Elliott Forbes-Robinson, Jim Hurlbert, Dick May, Steve Moore, Kyle Petty, Richard Petty, Lennie Pond, Jody Ridley, David Simko, Travis Tiller, D.K. Ulrich, Jimmy Walker (1)
