The NASCAR Hall of Fame Rusty Wallace will climb behind the wheel of the Pontiac FireBird for the IROC race at Washington in August. This one-off appearance will mark his return to racing after battling with eyesight issues. He recently opened up about the nerves he felt after spending years away from racing. 

While in conversation with Mike Bagley on the NASCAR Live podcast, Wallace spoke about Ray Evernham taking Bill Elliott and him to Kurtshaw to run a couple of laps in the car ahead of their appearance in August at Washington. Recapping his experience, he said,

"It did bring a lot of nerves to me. I’m like, 'Man, I haven't been in a car in a long doggone time, and races like these don't get you a lot of seat time to knock the bugs off."

The 1989 NASCAR Cup Series Champion has faced problems with his eyesight for a long time, which have hindered his ability to race. This is something that his brother Kenny Wallace has also opened up about during an episode of Herm & Schrader.

However, just before the testing, Rusty began wearing prescription glasses and called up fellow NASCAR drivers such as Kevin Harvick for advice. He said, 

"One big thing is that when I quit driving, I was never wearing these glasses. Never wore glasses, so then I notice Joey Logano is wearing glasses and Kevin Harvick’s wearing glasses, so I called Kevin," Rusty Wallace said on the podcast.

He further detailed the conversation in which Kevin Harvick told him that he "should have been wearing these glasses ten years ago," adding that the glasses helped Harvick "see cracks in the road I never could see before." Wallace also underwent a helmet fit to make sure that the glasses did not obstruct him while driving. 

Rusty Wallace will return to the IROC exhibition race ahead of  IndyCar's Freedom 250 grand prix weekend. The exhibition race will also feature other NASCAR Hall of Famers Jeff Gordon, Kurt Busch, Bobby Labonte, Rusty Wallace, and Bill Elliott, as well as Indy 500 winners Helio Castroneves, Tony Kanaan, and Dario Franchitti.  

Rusty Wallace talks about turning down a NASCAR team 

Kaulig Racing, which is known to lure retired NASCAR drivers out of retirement to race in their No. 25 RAM truck in the Craftsman Truck Series, tried to do the same with Rusty Wallace.

Sadly, they failed. 

During his media appearance ahead of the race at  North Wilkesboro Speedway, Wallace revealed, saying, 

"The Kaulig guys got a hold of me at the Betty Jane France poker tournament and asked me to do that. And I said no. And then I got a phone call two weeks ago from Ray Evernham wanting me to run at the White House in an IROC car, and I said yes." (via Cup Scene on YouTube)

If Wallace did take up Kaulig Racing’s offer, it would have marked his second-ever start in the truck series. He only has one start in the series, which came in 1996 at Nazareth. 

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Written by

Chionia Libania Colaco

Edited by

Suyashdeep Sason