INDIANAPOLIS – Indianapolis 500 standout Lloyd Ruby, one of the most popular drivers in Indianapolis Motor Speedway history, died March 23 in Wichita Falls, Texas. He was 81.
The hugely respected and much-beloved Ruby competed in 18 consecutive Indianapolis 500 Mile Races between 1960 and 1977 but never was able to pull off what had always seemed to be the inevitable victory. He led the “500” in five out of six starts between 1966 and 1971, only to have something either break or else delay him in some fashion while in a commanding position.
“He should have won the ‘500’ two or three times,” 1963 Indianapolis 500 winner Parnelli Jones said.
Ruby led for a career total of 126 laps, the seventh-highest number by a driver who never won. He finished 12th or higher in 11 different Indianapolis starts, his best finish third with a front-engine car in 1964. He qualified in the first three rows seven times at Indianapolis, with a best of fifth in 1966 and 1968.
Ruby won seven USAC National Championship races, including three at Milwaukee, two at Phoenix, and one each at Trenton, N.J., and Langhorne, Pa. In 1970, he won the pole for the inaugural 500-mile race at Ontario, Calif.
A standout in post-World War II midget car racing in the Southwest while still in his teens, Ruby never was given credit for his proficiency at road racing. In 1959, he placed second in the fledgling USAC Road Racing series, and in 1961 he drove a privately entered Lotus in the Grand Prix of the United States at Watkins Glen, N.Y. Later a key member of Ford Motor Co.’s major international effort, he shared the winning car in the Daytona Continental in 1965, and both the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1966.
His unlikely co-driver in all three of those victories was the expatriate, duffel-coat-wearing Englishman Ken Miles. Although they were eons apart in their upbringings, and seemingly would have had nothing in common, they bonded like brothers. Ruby was to have partnered Miles in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966 but was forced out when the light plane in which he was riding crashed on takeoff from an Indianapolis airport on its way to Milwaukee just a few days before.
Eventual Formula One World Champion Denis Hulme replaced the injured Ruby, and the Miles/Hulme combination was leading in the late stages when it was decided, for public relations reasons, to “slow down” the leading car and have the twin sister car of Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon, running second, catch up to have them take the checkered flag in a side-by-side salute. Le Mans officials subsequently ruled that, because of the order in which the cars had lined up for the “run across the main straight, jump in and take off” start, the McLaren/Amon car had covered a greater distance.
By the time Ruby shared the second-place-finishing Ford with A. J. Foyt in the 1967 Sebring race, Miles had died, lost in a testing accident at Riverside, Calif. Decades later, whenever the Le Mans incident or Miles was brought up, tears would well in Ruby’s eyes.
Normally so even-tempered and easygoing, Ruby felt quite passionately that Miles was the moral winner, not only because he had been leading by a comfortable margin and had slowed down in response to team orders, but that over a period of many months, he had performed virtually all of the development work on the cars. It was something Ruby never got over.
