Car Guy Magazine Car Guy Magazine Issue 1014 | Page 17

non grata by the SCCA Trans-Am techies, but
the FIA regs were more lenient. Yunick wanted
to take a poke at the Penske Camaro piloted by
Mark Donahue that had gobbled up all comers in the Trans-Am. The Yunick Camaro didn’t
handle as well, but it had a LOT more power
and the two had a spirited race until Ruby retired with a blown engine.
Although Ruby also put in wheel time in
Trans-Am and stock cars, his first love had become the Indianapolis 500. He loved the track,
eventually putting in over 75,000 miles race
and test miles. His first year was 1960, when
he drove a new Watson-Offy for colorful team
owner J.C. Agajanian. “A.J. Watson was the
kind of guy who could put on a white shirt and
pants, pick out his tools, crawl under a car and
fix everything without ever getting dirty,” recalls Ruby with a grin.“He had a blackboard on
the wall of his shop at Indy, and if you needed
some part and he wasn’t there, you dug around
until you found one and wrote it on the board.”

Ruby made the most of his opportunity by running as high as third and finishing seventh after running out of fuel with eleven laps to go.
“After running there, Indianapolis became my
favorite track,” Ruby says.
He drove a series of Watsons (and briefly
an Epperly) the next three years, and in 1964
he made his reputation with a fine third place
finish behind Foyt and Roger Ward (a scoring
error may hav