Rullo’s Supercars career was brief by all measures. He lasted just one year in the category as a full-timer with Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport but made three Bathurst 1000 starts from 2017 to 2019.
“Thinking about it now is a little bit weird,” Rullo told Speedcafe.
“The first time I drove a Supercar was 10 years ago now, which is crazy to think.”
A lot has happened since the teenager from Perth made headlines. Rullo, now 24 years old, still races, albeit in an entirely different discipline. Rally is his new domain.
The former touring car racer will begin his season with the Rally of Canberra this weekend, which marks the start of the EROAD Australian Rally Championship.
A lot of water has passed under the bridge since his last Supercars start in the 2019 Bathurst 1000.
He made a brief cameo in the TCR Australia Series but by and large has stayed away from asphalt competition, bar Targa West.
“Both in motorsport and professionally I’ve been able to mature a lot from that experience and learn a lot,” Rullo explained.
“So a lot of that was fast-tracked. It probably was a little bit of immaturity back then as well. But I wouldn’t say I have any regrets at all, no.
“We found ourselves in a bit of a tough situation in our year with LDM in Supercars because the car wasn’t super competitive.
“That didn’t help people saying ‘Oh, he’s too young’, but obviously going back to Super2 the following year [in 2018] and then to Nissan, we were right on the money with all the other Nissan co-drivers.
“We were in the championship fight to the last round in Super2. That was good to prove that and sign it off like that. Never say never for circuit racing in the future, but yeah, I love what I’m doing at the moment in rally.”
Rullo’s Supercars career began in controversial circumstances, having been given a dispensation to compete.
Some questioned whether the 16-year-old was ready to compete in the championship.
He had the likes of Supercars legend Craig Lowndes against him among other high-profile commentators.
“I just hope it doesn’t backfire and that they have not thrown someone into the deep end too quickly,” said Lowndes in 2017.
“They say you either sink or swim. Hopefully he doesn’t sink.”
The naysayers were only validated when Rullo copped a $10,000 fine for a dangerous driving charge for an incident in qualifying at Hidden Valley Raceway with veteran Garth Tander.
But did he feel unfairly judged?
“Maybe at times. I didn’t really let it get to me,” he replied, “but I’m not someone who really cracks under pressure or anything like that.
“I’ve maybe thrived off it, if anything. I think I had ‘I love haters’ on my helmet at the first round – cheeky little 16-year-old.”
“In saying that, I didn’t have the results to back it up,” he laughed. “Behind the scenes is very different and the only people I could compare myself to were my teammates for that year.
“Based off of that, I was either on their pace or a little bit faster. I was going toe to toe with the two or three teammates I had that year, and that’s all I could base my results off.
“I was actually quite happy with the year, but yeah, there’s certainly a lot of things I learnt now that I’m like ‘Oh what if we did this, what if we did that’ and you know things like tyre wear that we never really talked about and I just attack straight out the gate.”
Rullo made his Super2 Series debut in 2016 and despite a relatively poor season, fast-tracked himself into Supercars.
That was largely because of the sheer volume of racing kilometres available by comparison to the Super2 Series.
If there was one way to speed up his development, he believed racing in Supercars was the way to go.
It ultimately wound up with him going to the Super2 Series in 2018 where he was far more competitive and was a title contender.
He would make one more Supercars start in 2019 as a co-driver before turning his attention to his family’s business.
So what did he learn? Having the right people in his corner could have steered him in a different direction.
Seeing the likes of Broc Feeney and Matt Payne rise quickly into competitive seats from the outset based on their Super2 Series has Rullo wondering if he could have done the same.
“There are a lot of lessons out of that experience,” said Rullo.
“I think the people you surround yourself with is very important in that space, and coming into rally as well, I think you can only learn off the people who are teaching you.
“I know I’m a good learner and I can ask the right questions, and now we’ve got the right people to sort of finish that formula. So I think that’s maybe what was lacking, for some of the parts in Supercars where I didn’t have some of that experience to lean on.
“I had some good co-drivers and teammates along the way, but I can see how it would be quite different if I entered Supercars with a Triple Eight or something like that.
“You’re even seeing that with some of the young guys at the moment. They walk into a top team and it’s very easy for them to learn very quickly on the fly from the best people — and some of the guys that go to the slower teams, it’s a little bit harder.
“It’s a combination of things like it’s a team sport at the end of the day, but you really have to work together as a team to unlock that speed from the car.”
The Toyota Gazoo Racing Rally of Canberra gets underway on March 22.
Discussion about this post