Taking a cross-country trip in May 1984, from his native California and stepping up from a racing comfort zone that three years earlier produced a Professional Karting Association World title, 24-year-old Scott Donald Pruett teamed with co-driver Paul Lewis in that day’s Midway Monster (Mazda RX-7, believe it or not) for a 500-kilometer race at Charlotte Motor Speedway (later known as “Lowe’s Motor Speedway” and, well, “Charlotte Motor Speedway,” again, sometime or other) at the end of which he’d finish 19th after starting 32nd.
After a months-long layoff Pruett would race his second professional sportscar and his final race of the 1984 IMSA season in his native California at Sears Point Raceway. In an August show that split a 15-car GTP field and a 30-car GTO/GTU field into separate races, Pruett drove a (Phil) Conte Racing Mazda RX-7 GTU to a 9th-overall, sixth-in-class finish.
Over the ensuing years, Pruett returned to Charlotte time and again, driving a variety of cars ranging from an International Race of Champions Camaro to a NASCAR Sprint Cup stock car (then, “Winston Cup”).
Between 1984 and his birthday celebration today, Pruett has thus far scored eight professional sportscar racing championships (he’s currently leading the Grand-Am DP championship for a prospective ninth), among which are included two Grand-Am Daytona Prototype crowns won with two different co-drivers, Max Papis and Memo Rojas (respectively in 2004 and 2008), and in the pursuit of which he has yet to finish worse than second.
Outside of his Daytona Prototype championships, Pruett has won championships in SCCA Trans-Am (1987, 1994, 2003); IMSA GTO (1986, 1988); IMSA GT Endurance Championship (1986) and a 1981 Professional Karting Association World title (with a host of “minor” titles along the way).
Here’s what longtime racing foe and, like Pruett, a still-racing Jack Baldwin (at right) had to say about what one newspaper writer once called the “fair-haired boy” of IMSA:
“The little brat was not going to win. The great Scott Pruett was not going to win. So when I passed him, he knocked me out of the driver's championship.''
(Well, a complimentary quote wasn’t intimated.)
Baldwin’s thoughts erupted (Jack, it means “forcefully ejected” which in-turn means, “blew up”) after that 1986 IMSA Columbus GTO race - which Willy T. Ribbs won - one of a series of knockdown, drag-out fights occurring over multiple season between Pruett and Ribbs but into which others, like Baldwin, were inextricably sucked.
Fought at the 1986 season’s next-to-last race at Columbus, Ohio, while Pruett and Baldwin were running first and third in that year’s IMSA GTO championship race, Ribbs had earlier that season set the tone when, as a backmarker in Miami, he on the race’s last lap punted a leading Pruett which, in turn, opened a wide-open winning door for one Jack Baldwin – who gleefully skated through and furthermore later added, “I ain’t returning the winner’s check! Are you crazy!?”
Fined $2,000 by IMSA for his Miami punt of Pruett, another $1,500 was added for the Columbus incident and for which Pruett was likewise fined. While one might think Baldwin to have been an innocent bystander at Columbus, IMSA having also fined him $1,500 there suggests some level of culpability. (Jack, that means, “they thought you had something to do with it.”).
The Pruett-Ribbs pushing, shoving and door-handle-banging came to a head, so to speak, at Portland in 1987 after the Purolator 300k IMSA GTO/GTU race. By that time driving a Toyota Celica for Dan Gurney, Willy T. (that’s what EVERYONE, ‘ceptin’ probably his momma, called him at the time) strolled up to Pruett’s street ride as it passed through the paddock. According to more than a few folks on hand, a shotgun-riding Pruett (no, Jack, in a car seat; not straddling a 12-gauge), with spouse Judy in his lap, saw Ribbs approach, rolled down the window to congratulate the driver’s second-place finish whereupon at great speed a fist entered the passenger compartment (that would be from the car’s “outside to inside,” Jack).
Not one for anymore getting too terribly mired in details of events because yours truly has grown to enjoy regular nap times, the reader should Google or, perhaps more appropriately, “Bing” the rest of the story. 
Surely it’s out there, somewhere. Let’s just add, though, “accounts differ.”
Given contemplation, however, one might see from whence still-existing acrimony between those named “Gurney” and “Pruett” still burns deep in present-day bellies after Ribbs’ team owner, Dan Gurney, in the wake of Portland reportedly smiled and said something along the lines of, “Oops.” (That would mean . . . oh, never mind, Jack.)
I tangentially digressed.
Just two short years after his 1984 Charlotte race Pruett already was a busy driver, first scoring a ride with Jack Roush’s already much-feared Ford team in IMSA and, at about mid-season, joined Roush’s SCCA Trans-Am effort, which provided Pruett a Mercury Capri for his first race in that series (while teammate Pete Halsmer had a much cooler Merkur XR4Ti rocket ship).
Pruett was about midway through nailing down his first IMSA and sportscar championship when he returned to Charlotte in 1986 to team with Bruce Jenner in a Jack Roush Ford Mustang GTO (yes, Jack, the former Olympian Decathlon winner; surely you remember him because you finished third to Jenner’s second – by 16 points – in the ’86 GTO championship run).
Much like 1984, when Pruett first raced in Charlotte and ran his second IMSA race at Sears Point, Pruett in 1986 would also have a following race in California, only it was the next day. So after closing the race in third, Pruett quickly went from CMS to an awaiting overnight plane ride so as to allow sufficient time for the debut SCCA Trans-Am driver to secure his $50 club membership – without which he wouldn’t later that day be allowed to compete at Riverside Raceway.
Ironically driving an already proven chassis which Willy T drove to five wins in 1985, an otherwise non-qualifying Pruett started 31st and finished first, followed by Halsmer in second; Chris Kneifel in third (also a Roush Mercury Capri).
Today, one pretty much has the feeling that Pruett, if for whatever reason he were to be sent to a Daytona Prototype grid’s rear, would certainly try to do the same thing and probably accomplish it, too.
In 1987, Pruett started his Rolex 24 winning role (no, Jack, I really meant “role” though the other woulda worked, too) by claiming his first win (in GTO; 7th overall) with co-drivers Lyn St. James, Tom Gloy, Bill Elliott and a team owner named Roush who, of course, fielded a Ford (No. 11 Mustang). Pruett last won the 2008 Rolex 24 in the No. 01 TELMEX/Target Lexus-Riley DP with Juan Pablo Montoya, Dario Franchitti and present day co-driver Memo Rojas (below).
Pruett, Rojas, Papis and Justin Wilson and their No. 01 TELMEX BMW-Riley this year finished second, 52.303 seconds behind the winning No. 9 Action Express Racing Porsche Cayenne V8-Riley of Joao Barbosa, Terry Borcheller, Mike Rockenfeller and Ryan Dalziel.
The team was leading at the end of the 22-hour when an undiagnosed chicane-area hiccup caused driver Justin Wilson to make a snap decision only moments later to steer the blue, white and red TELMEX/Target car into in the team’s Daytona International Speedway garage. Finding nothing amiss in hardly more than a minute’s passage, Pruett was sent back onto the track to close the race in a double-stint effort to regain the lost ground.
Arguably becoming the Rolex Sports Car Series’ best team since its 2004 debut, the TELMEX team knew if anyone was capable of returning the car to the point, Pruett was their guy to do it.
Five laps later while carrying a nearly full gas load, Pruett’s 232nd lap behind the wheel since Saturday’s race start, Pruett on Lap 694 would turn the No. 01 team’s fastest race lap at a 1:41.06 – close to if not faster than any race lap he’d ever recorded at Daytona (including three runs in early 90’s TWR Jags).
Having raced no DP other than that fielded by Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates, Pruett’s 24 Daytona Prototype victories – including his most recent at Homestead-Miami Speedway’s March 6, 2010, Grand Prix of Miami – ranks highest in that category and is 10 wins ahead of SunTrust Racing’s second-place Max Angelelli (14). Alex Gurney and co-driver Jon Fogarty are next, each having scored 12 wins accompanied by the other.
Between his first Rolex race and his most recent Pruett scored class and overall wins while driving four different classes of cars, in: 1988, teamed for first-in-GT0-class (10th overall) with Paul Miller, Bobby Akin Jr, Pete Halsmer in a Jack Roush Merkur XR4Ti; 1989, Pruett would finish 58th overall with Paul Gentilozzi in a No. 27 Not-Your-Father’s Rocketsports Oldsmobile; 1990, again teamed with Roush to drive a No. 11 Mercury XR-7 Cougar to 8th-place with Dorsey Schroeder, Max Jones, Mark Martin and Robert Lappalainen; 1991, finished 30th overall in the No. 2 Tom Walkinshaw Racing Jaguar XJR-12 GTP with Davy Jones, Derek Warwick and Raul Boesel ; 1992, drove another TWR Jaguar, finishing first in GTP/ second overall (yep, that’s correct) in the No. 2 XJR-12D Group-C with Davy Jones, David Brabham and Scott Goodyear; 1993, a third TWR Jag run in the 10th-place Group-C No. 2 XJR-12-D with just Jones and Goodyear; 1994, first-place overall and GTS class, driving a Cunningham Racing No. 76 Nissan 300ZX with Paul Gentilozzi, Butch Leitzinger and Steve Millen; (after skipping a few years) 1998, finished 39th in the No. 5 Panoz-Visteon Racing Panoz GTR with co-drivers Andy Wallace, Raul Boesel and Doc Bundy; 2001, drove again with Paul Gentilozzi, John Miller and Anthony Lazzaro in the No. 5 Saleen SR-7; 2002; finished first in GTS/5th overall in a No. 3 Rocketsports Jaguar XJR with Michael Lauer, Brian Simo and (oh, yes) Gentilozzi; 2003, off; 2004, finished 10th in CGRwF(yJ)S No. 01 Lexus-Riley with Max Papis, Scott Dixon and Jimmy Morales; 2005, 7th-place in CGRwF(yJ)S No. 01 with Ryan Briscoe and full-season partner Luis Diaz; 2006, 39th in (c’mon, you know) No. 01 Lexus-Riley with Luis Diaz and Max Papis; 2007, first overall with Juan Pablo and Salvador Duran in TELMEX/Target No. 01 Lexus-Riley.
Pruett came to the Rolex Sports Car Series with Chip Ganassi Racing w/ Felix (y José) Sabates in 2004 and most everyone in the paddock thought the team out of the box would be the most formidable yet seen in the series. They were correct, too, with respect to accomplishments and continuity from the get-go.
Together with spouse Judy and offspring Lauren, Taylor and Cameron, when not racing and writing their co-authored Word Weaver book series, Pruett loves to play in North California’s Wine Country dirt, striving to find that perfect grape that’ll match that perfect line he’ll admit having yet to find.
Later,
DC
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