Time is a tricky thing at this track. It’s measured in blocks of red and white paint along the cement walls surrounding the half-mile of Greenville-Pickens Speedway.
The white blocks are filling up with the names of track champions who were racing long, long before Logan Ruffin was born.
Greenville-Pickens crowned 41 track champions — beginning a list with Grady Hawkins in 1957 that would also include names such as David Pearson and Ralph Earnhardt — before Ruffin came along in 1998.
And when what is now NASCAR’s Sprint Cup series raced here — first on dirt, then on the aging, tire-chewing pavement the track now sports — it produced a list of winners that looks like a hall-of-fame ballot. Junior Johnson. Bob and Tim Flock. Buck Baker. Ned Jarrett. Richard Petty. Pearson. Bobby Isaac.

This generation starts with a video game and graduates to a race car before graduating from elementary school. Ruffin was 9 when he started racing quarter-midgets. From there, his approach to racing has been with the type of single mindedness that has previously been found in Eastern Bloc women’s tennis and Tiger Woods.

But lately the old track with all the mostly forgotten history has had an interesting glimpse into what is quite possibly the sport’s future.
Joe Gibbs Racing phenom Joey Logano won here last year in the Busch East Series, and, in Thursday night’s Pro All Star Series Firecracker 125, Ruffin, who is hoping to follow the “Logano Plan” to NASCAR’s elite series, raced here four days before his 14th birthday and finished sixth among a group of veteran drivers.
And maybe Ruffin’s appearance — as was Logano’s — is a sign of change. It’s been quite a while since hard-handed men who built and rebuilt their cars on weeknights could win in them on weekends, but Logano and now Ruffin represent another new generation of racer.
This generation starts with a video game and graduates to a race car before graduating from elementary school. Ruffin was 9 when he started racing quarter-midgets. From there, his approach to racing has been with the type of single mindedness that has previously been found in Eastern Bloc women’s tennis and Tiger Woods.
“I ended up catching the bug, and we just kept going,” said Ruffin, who still hovers around five-feet tall with boyish freckles and red hair that makes you think of Huckleberry Finn.
The “bug” turned out to be more like racing pneumonia, which apparently has spread to the entire family and is without a cure.
“If he’s not working on the car, he wants to be racing the car,” said Ruffin’s mother, Shelley, who is race mom, school teacher and unofficial team photographer for the family-owned R Motorsports team.
So far, the commitment has paid off with a 2008 World Series of Asphalt ASA/Crate Late Model championship, which included three victories in six starts. But Ruffin’s schedule also includes home schooling because he would miss too many classes in middle school. There are autograph signings during which the only thing that separates him from young autograph seekers is a driver’s uniform. Just about every week there’s bound to be a new track in a new town.
“It’s funny,” he said. “Earlier this year, I drove the car out to do all of the pre-race and they were saying what a great job I did, driving the car out for my dad.”
But it is his résumé he is building on the track. He is hoping for a developmental deal, which could come at age 14, but he expects it will be closer to 15.
“We’ve had a couple of teams talk to us,” he said. “They’ve said, ‘we can’t walk into the boss and tell him we’ve got a 13-year-old out there.’”
Until they can, he’ll keep following the Logano plan, a new plan for a new era of driver with talent and tricky time on their side.