Ricky Rudd's average finish this season is 21.8. Credit: Autostock

Conversation: Rudd

In Days of Thunder, when Rowdy Burns notes that he's raced with a broken back and with his eyes bulging out of his head, he is pretty much describing Ricky Rudd.

He once raced at Daytona after taping open his swollen eyes with duct tape.

	Credit: Autostock
	Inside the Numbers Ricky Rudd's Cup career Starts 867 Wins 23 Top-5s 194 Top-10s 371 Poles 29 Laps Led 7,852 Avg. Start 15.0 Avg. Finish 16.1 Earnings $39,575,420

Rudd's willingness to play hurt -- he's made 780 consecutive starts -- has helped him stay competitive at NASCAR's top level as he approaches his 50th birthday.

All toughness talk aside, Rudd has started to turn around a mediocre season. In the second half, he's got more points than any non-Chase driver except for Brian Vickers.

NASCAR.COM's Ryan Smithson spoke to Rudd before the MBNA RacePoints 400 at Dover, where Rudd finished 12th.

Q: Ricky, how many titles do you think you would have won if the Chase format has been there the whole time?

Rudd: I am not really sure. I don't know the stat. I think we've been in the top-10 for 18, 19 years. I have never gone back and looked and seen what would have happened if we were under the new format. Anyways, I have never done it. I really don't have a clue. I have never thought of it too much, you know?

Q: I got an e-mail that claimed they saw you practice in blue jeans about 20 years ago. They said you got out of the car and you were in a sweatshirt and blue jeans. Does that ring a bell at all?

Rudd: No. No. I have always worn a firesuit as far as I remember. I am kind of a safety nut. I've never done that. No idea where that came from. Now, I have a go-kart track that we go play on sometimes. That might be the truth to that. Besides that, I have always worn a firesuit.

Q: I have always wondered how you taped your eyes open and how uncomfortable was that? How long were they actually open?

Rudd: It was one of these deals where you do what you have to do.

I didn't start off with that in mind. I was at Daytona and had a pretty big wreck in the Bud Shootout -- it was the Busch Clash then -- came back, and we had a day off because it rained, came back to the racetrack, I guess a day had gone by since we had actually been in the wreck, went out in the race car.

I knew I had to get back in the horse that had thrown me off pretty quickly and I got back out onto the racetrack. And I noticed when I got into the corner I sort of got vertigo.

I didn't know if it was an inner-ear distortion problem, trauma to the inner ear, or whatever, but my balance mechanism went kind of haywire and everything would go dark when I went into the corner.

My face was swollen really badly, looked like I had been beat up pretty bad by somebody much bigger than me, it wasn't really hard to think about it. I looked at my face. I could hardly open my eyes to begin with.

They were like little slits. What was happening was that I was going into the corner and the vertical g-load at Daytona is not a whole lot, but it's probably a G and a half, two Gs vertical max, but everything was going dark and it was mainly like shutting your eyes.

So I knew I had to do something. I had to fix it, so there was some duct tape up on the toolbox. The guys were changing the spark plugs, I said, 'Let me go back and try this again.'

I never told them I was uncomfortable. I went around there wide-open but I never told them I was really uncomfortable in the car. I went and got a roll of duct tape.

I didn't have Band-Aids. I would have used Band-Aids, but I didn't have any. But the duct taped it right there, so I just kind of took all the extra skin and taped it to my eyelid and taped it up to my forehead and put my helmet on and went on.

Q: Goggles, visor?

Rudd: Everything was the same. I still had my goggles. We didn't have full-face helmets then, everyone wore bubble goggles.

So the bubble goggles went on over the duct tape and everything worked fine. I am not sure about the blinking part, but the biggest thing was that all that swelling around my eyebrows, I was able to pull it up.

Q: Has this year been the worst luck you've had? Seems like you have really blown a lot of tires.

Rudd: This is probably the worst-luck season I know I have ever had. Last year we didn't have bad luck, we just ran poorly, and this year, we have had good race cars.

We did a little study that if you got back into the last 10 races, we would be in the top 10 in the points...

Q: Ninth in points since Sonoma.

	Credit: Autostock
	GOING HOLLYWOOD Ricky Rudd played a NASCAR driver -- ironically not himself -- in the 1983 Burt Reynolds film, "Stroker Ace."  Rudd told NASCAR.COM's Ryan Smithson that he still gets occassional royalty checks from the film.  Others drivers in the movie include Neil Bonnett, Dale Earnhardt, Harry Gant, Terry Labonte, Benny Parsons, Kyle Petty, Tim Richmond and Cale Yarborough.

Rudd: Yeah. So, when we don't get involved in wrecks, there were nine wrecks that we didn't cause, but we were involved in them -- I don't what you call it but bad luck.

I think of those nine, probably eight of them I was hit in the back end trying to slow down to miss wrecks. Not a whole lot you can do about that.

Just don't really understand...well, I do understand why there are a lot of wrecks but I'll keep that comment to myself.

Q: We have not run Dover yet, but who you like to win the title?

Rudd: I don't care. I don't like any of them. No, I probably shouldn't say that. Who I like to win the title?

Q: No, not who you like per se, but if you were a betting man.

Rudd: Who would I put money on to win the title?

Q: Exactly. Exactly.

Rudd: I don't know. That is going to be tough. Biffle has been fairly strong all year, Stewart has been exceptionally strong.

He's been exceptionally strong. I don't know. We will have to wait and see if he doesn't self-destruct. I guess right now you will have to put your money on Stewart, but Biffle is pretty good everywhere.

It is going to be tough, it is really going to come down to the guy who doesn't have any trouble, and I don't know that you pick a favorite because of that. You have a lot of guys who are running fairly equal right now.

Q: Seems like from the test last week at Lowe's, a lot of guys had problems, but you didn't. You said the track was OK.

No, the track was good. I did not run the middle groove, which was the preferred groove at Charlotte in 1 and 2 in the last race, it was the preferred groove, I never ran the middle because they had ground the bottom and they had good grip there, so I am not saying that those guys are complaining about a non-issue, but we didn't have any issues.

We ran good and we worked on race setup the whole time. Ours cars had good grip.

[Crew chief] Fatback McSwain has always had good cars at Charlotte and I am not sure he made adjustments before we got over to Charlotte, but a lot of good race cars wrecked, so something is going on. Knock on wood, I am glad we didn't see it.