Have you been scrolling through Instagram lately and come across a post that looks like this from say, Fernando Alonso?

You probably have and you immediately thought, what the hell is Rufus? No worries because the rest of us wondered that too. Initial thoughts are it appears to be an invitational type event. Maybe like an IROC or ROC type of thing. There is no mention of a race or a meetup, nothing. All that you can find is @rufus_legacy tagged in the Alonso picture. So we headed there.

The instagram page fro Rufus is filled with pictures of iconic drivers with a simple yellow bar across their face. It has a very Fyre Festival feel to it. Simplistic pictures with some sort of subliminal messaging. You don’t fully understand it but you desperately want to know more.

With all of the invites having most of the text blurred out we had to find out more information. Next step was to look for a website. Which wasn’t hard to find because it’s right there in the bio, www.ruf.us. The URL takes you to a static homepage with a single phone number. No subpages, no contact information, no explanation, just a phone number.

We’ll get back to the phone number in a minute. First, we need to talk more about the website. A quick domain search yesterday showed IndyCar driver JR Hildebrand as the owner of the domain. That’s interesting but not surprising, the guy is essentially a genius, he turned down MIT twice, of course, he would be behind some sort of subliminal campaign. And this past weekend at Fontana a number of NASCAR guys got their invitations, guess who was in attendance?

The physical address for the domain registration comes up as 5126 Venice Blvd, Los Angeles, California. The company that occupies that location goes by the name Race Service. You can check out their Instagram here: @Race.Service. There isn’t much information about Race Service, their website is once again a static homepage that states they are content creators. One interesting thing about Race Service is someone who is associated with them. Former Indy Lights driver Ryan Phinny appears to do a lot with the company. Unfortunately, a domain registrar search for rs.direct comes up with all information redacted. But two IndyCar guys both associated with this address has to mean they’re behind “The World Championship of Motorsport.” This is purely a guess but there’s a solid chance Jenson Button is in on this deal as well. The colors match up with the colors he won his world championship with, he just used them in the Mint 400, he lives in LA, and he’s on the RS instagram page.

So About That Phone Number

The only piece of information on the ruf.us website is a simple phone number. 1-877-RUFUS-07 or 1-877-783-8707 for those of you who could never understand how you were supposed to call a word.

What happens when you call that number? You’re met with a voice recording who states:

“We’re sorry you’ve reached the RUFUS information line. The RUFUS standings as of Monday March 18th are as follows:

Fernando Alonso 2 races 200 points

Alexander Rossi 3 races 181 points

Kyle Busch 2 races 180 points

Joey Logano 2 races 160 points

Valtteri Bottas 2 races 153 points

Brad Keselowski 2 races 123 points

Scott Dixon 3 races 118 points

Simon Pagenaud 3 races 112 points

Josef Newgarden 1 race 100 points

Martin Truex Jr. 2 races 80 points

Lewis Hamilton 1 race 80 points

Jimmie Johnson 2 races 70 points

Kurt Busch 2 races 69 points

Will Power 1 race 68 points

Max Verstappen 1 race 68 points

Kevin Harvick 2 races 60 points

Aric Almirola 2 races 60 points

Sebastian Vettel 1 race 60 points

Clint Bowyer 2 races 59 points

Chase Elliott 2 races 46 points

Kimi Raikkonen 1 race 37 points

Sebastian Bourdais 3 races 28 points

Tony Kannan 1 race 16 points

Daniel Ricciardo 1 race 8 points

Ryan Hunter Reay 1 race 3 points

So it appears this is a points championship that rewards drivers for racing as many disciplines as possible. It also appears to exclude Xfinity Series races hence why Kyle only has participated in 2 races. Which leads to another question, the Cup Series has participated in 5 races so how are they measuring that? Lots of questions and not a ton of answers. One thing that is certainly a win is worth 100 points. There is no physical head to head competition against one another, instead, it rewards drivers for racing as much as possible in multiple disciplines. That’s about all we can firmly say at this point.

If you have more information on Rufus let us know.

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