Sweet Sixteen

Teenager Alex Rullo is the youngest driver to ever race in Supercars and is combining his Year 12 studies with racing in the main game for Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport in 2017. So how is the Western Australian coping at such a young age?

- Andrew Clarke

At the risk of sounding like my father, I find it hard to believe that a 16-year-old in this modern world has enough maturity to drive, let alone race a Supercar. But Alex Rullo may be one of the exceptions.

Rullo is studying Year 12 during the week and racing for Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport (LDM) on the weekends. He is still looking for that ultimate speed and there is a fair argument that he may struggle with the LDM Commodore, but he doesn’t look out of his depth.

He is not alone in elite sports as a teenager; we have swimmers and tennis players competing all around the world before they have finished school. But motorsport is different. The cost of a dummy spit can be much more, not just counting into the hundreds of thousands of dollars but also of life and limb.

But the debut age in motorsport is dropping around the world and being challenged time and time again. Max Verstappen set the bar at 17 years and 166 days old when he made his Formula 1 debut two seasons ago and became the youngest grand prix winner at 18 years and 28 days.

Paul Dumbrell was previously the youngest to debut in Supercars when he raced at Bathurst in 1999 as a 17-year-old. Rullo was 16 years and 273 days when the lights went green for the first race of the 2017 season in Adelaide. He has to stick L-plates on the road car to get to the track but he doesn’t seem to carry his study books with him when he arrives.

“It’s honestly something that I leave behind when I leave school in Perth,” he says of the case of the strangely absent schoolbag.

“Every time I make the journey across, I’m working with a bunch of young adults, mainly, and a lot of experienced guys as well. We’ve got a good blend to the team and I sort of fit in with all of them. I tend to forget that I’m 16 a lot of the time.