68-year-old Rusty Wallace is one of the greatest drivers that the world of motorsports has seen. He won the Winston Cup Series championship in 1989 and stands tall as a NASCAR Hall of Famer. Born into a racing family, he was the eldest of three sons and the first to follow in the footsteps of his father Russell Wallace, who was a short-track race car driver from Fenton, Missouri.
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Between 1974 and 1978, Rusty emerged as one of the most successful short-track drivers in the Midwest and won over 200 races. This served as the platform for him to enter professional racing. In 1979, he won the United States Auto Club’s Rookie of the Year award competing against the likes of A.J. Foyt. He married Patti in 1980 and finished second in his first-ever NASCAR race that same year.
Rusty joined the Winston Cup Series field full-time in 1984. He finished 14th in the final standings and earned Rookie of the Year honors driving the No. 88 Pontiac for Cliff Stewart. He won his first Cup Series race in 1986 when driving the No. 27 Pontiac for Raymond Beadle. In 1989, he beat his close friend and rival Dale Earnhardt to win the championship by 12 points.
He has three adult children, Greg, Katie, and Stephen, with Patti. The family lives near Charlotte, North Carolina. A lot of information about Greg and Katie not being available to the public appears to be a conscious decision.
Stephen, however, is well-known in racing circles. He had a successful career in the Xfinity Series with 34 top-10s over nine years. He is currently 37 years old.
The brothers of Wallace who followed him into racing
Rusty has two brothers, Mike and Kenny. Mike made his Cup Series debut in 1991 but the majority of his success came in the Craftsman Truck Series. He boasts four wins in the Xfinity Series and five wins in the Truck Series, with plenty of top-10s in both. He is succeeded on the track by his children, Chrissy and Matt.
Kenny is perhaps the most readily available Wallace brother today. He is often found expressing his racing opinions on social media and his YouTube channel. He started 344 races in the Cup Series beginning in 1990 and secured 27 top-10s. A step down in the Xfinity Series, he has nine victories and 173 top-10s.
Kenny was quite agitated last year after NASCAR’s social media team left Rusty out of NASCAR’s 75th anniversary videos. He got on his channel and said, “I’ve been waiting for Rusty. Like, just barely a picture of Rusty in these 30-second videos. Just like a one-second clip of Rusty. That social media team, they must be 20 years old and they must be forgetting the greatest time in NASCAR history.”
Regardless of such errors, it cannot be denied by anyone that the Wallaces are right up there along with the Earnhardts, the Elliotts, and the Pettys as one of the greatest racing families in the sport. And the speed and skill of Rusty are what ought to be majorly thanked for that status.
