Scott Pruett: Conversation With A Racing Legend, Pt. One

: That’s fantastic. I understand that you took a little vacation time with the family this past week. I know every time I see you interviewed it’s always, “Hi to my family back home”. Your family is really important to you. Tell us a little bit about that aspect of thanking your family, saying “hi” to them, and how important that relationship and their support is in your racing career. 

SP: You know, it’s amazing. I’ve been very fortunate to do what I’ve done for a long time. You have a lot of really good people around you—mechanics, engineers, and so on. The thing that you typically don’t see is the fact that, you know, the majority of us—girlfriends, wives, kids, they’re the ones who put up with all this crazy stuff that we do. 

I mean we [spend] forever hours on the road—endless day after day, weekend after weekend, and they’re the ones that are running the shop, the business at home. I like to joke with my wife that she’s the CEO of...certainly of our household. 

It’s just amazing what they do in putting up with what we do, and the fact that all of us love what we do, and don’t get me wrong, but at the same time we also love our families. And a lot of them don’t get the time or just can’t fit into their schedules to travel on the road as much as we do. 

It all started out with my little boy, who’s eight now, he was five or four at the time, when I’d say, “Hi to my family at home”, he thought I was talking directly to him. So he’s waving at the TV, and so it just got to be this tradition that we started and just keep on doing it. 

AA: So, hi to your family back home, even though you’re up in Columbus. You’re a traveling man. 

Let’s talk a little bit about the 2008 Grand-Am series to date. You started off with a bang—another win at the 24 Hours of Daytona. This time with...You’ve got quite the crew in that car: yourself, Memo Rojas, Juan Pablo Montoya, and Dario Franchitti. And you guys went out there once again and just put on a clinic in that Lexus Riley on how to run that car successfully for 24 hours flawlessly. 

SP: You know, that is the true test of man and machine. A lot of the listeners don’t realize that the Daytona 24 Hours is the most difficult race in the world. It’s 24 hours, a lot of darkness because it’s held at the end of January, so you’re talking about 13-14 hours of darkness. You’re talking about a fairly short track—three-and-a-half miles, starting sixty to seventy cars. 

So it’s tough. I mean, it’s tough on drivers, it’s tough on crews, it’s tough on teams, and it’s tough on everything. The fact that Ganassi has won that race three consecutive years, two consecutive with the 01 car, is nothing short of fantastic. One, it was a record. Two is the fact that when you get a great group of guys together, you’re working almost like one. 

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