Ricky Rudd is on the verge of running a part-time schedule next season. David Wyler, president of Wyler Racing, told me [Dustin Long] Saturday at Talladega that provided the team can find sponsorship — which he is confident they will — Rudd will drive in 16 races for the Toyota team. Efforts to reach Rudd on Saturday were unsuccessful. Those 16 races would be events with NASCAR’s car of tomorrow, a boxier car that is supposed to provide more driver safety and balance the competition by making the cars similar (think IROC). The car will race at such tracks as Richmond, Martinsville, Dover, Watkins Glen and Infineon — places Rudd has won often in his career. Rudd is scheduled to drive for the team in a car of tomorrow test Monday at Talladega and also drive the car in a test at Homestead Oct. 16-18. Wyler says Rudd is ready to return based on a few visits to the teams race shop.(HamptonRoads.com/Roanoke Times)(10-8-2006)
UPDATE: Ricky Rudd might have had enough time out of a race car that he could get back into it for a partial schedule in 2007. Rudd tested a “car of tomorrow” Monday for [#46] Wyler Racing at Talladega Superspeedway. He could run the 16-race COT schedule for the team next season. “David [Wyler] wants to run a lot of the car-of-tomorrow events next year, and I guess Toyota is supporting them pretty good on the engineering side,” Rudd said before the test session. “It sounds like something I would be interested in. I’ve got a lot of things that I’m thinking of and don’t really know what I’m going to do next year. He’s going to go racing if he can make it happen. “I said, ‘Get everything put together and run it by me when you get the financial support to do it, and we’ll go from there.'” Until he gets that, the 50-year-old Rudd says he isn’t committed to the ride. He said he would like to have things done in the next few weeks. The car of tomorrow intrigues Rudd, as does the possibility of working with veteran crew chief Tony Furr. Rudd said working with the new car, Toyota and limited schedule is what makes the Wyler offer attractive. As far as other offers go, Rudd said he doesn’t want to do a full schedule. He said he has not talked with his former employer, Robert Yates Racing, about driving the #88 car next season. “They’ve called me. I’ve called them back, and we missed each other,” Rudd said. “[It was] about 30 days ago. We actually have never had a conversation. … It’s really confusing. I’m trying to figure out what I want to do really. The longer I’ve been away from it …, I’m sort of detoxing a little bit.”(SceneDaily.com)(10-10-2006)
