August 04, 2002 – RUMAN EARNS 4TH PLACE FINISH IN HARD FOUGHT TROIS-RIVIERES TRANS-AM
Trois Rivieres, Quebec – Bob Ruman finished 4th in the Cenweld/McNichols Corvette at Sunday’s le Grand Prix de Trois-Rivieres for the second time in a row, having also finished 4th the last time Trans-Am raced at Trois Rivieres in 1999.
“It’s been a little bit of a dry spell, the last several races,” explained Ruman. “But the team persevered and kept working hard and it finally came together again for us this weekend. We came into Trois-Rivieres confident of a turn-around. We’ve done well here before and we knew that if we paced ourselves we could do well. This street race is like a fast endurance race, you really have to be conscientious of your equipment. We were particularly attentive to the brakes, especially after the brake failure in the Washington race two weeks ago. When the brakes started getting warm, I backed off a little, then I’d put the power down again.”
The double-yellow caution flags thrown for Mike Lewis’s car fire, 24 laps from the end, allowed the field to bunch up. At the restart it was Leitzinger in first, then Miller, Drissi, Ruhlman and Ruman in 5th. Hayner, who was 3 laps down was in between Ruhlman and Ruman.
“Hayner decided to race Ruhlman, so at first I thought I’d just hang back a bit and not get caught in the fray. Ruhlman hugged the turn at the end of the straight and Hayner tried to go to the outside – Hayner scraped the wall and I ducked inside him. We then drag raced into turn 9 and I was winning. But I could see that Hayner was going too fast to make the turn, so I braked early and let Hayner sling-shot by me, right off the end of the track. He was able to reel it in and again we raced to the hairpin turn before the pits. He was on the outside and as soon as I touched the brakes, he jumped in front of me. Hayner got by Ruhlman and then when Hayner got by Drissi, Ruhlman followed him through.”
“My brakes were getting pretty soft, so I had to drop back a little. All three of them were racing each other and I knew that was going to hurt their tires and brakes. I picked up the pace and was gaining 2 seconds a lap on them. I caught up to Drissi with 2 laps to go, and on the last lap I tried to pass him at the end of the straight, but didn’t have quite enough. Then I tried turn 9 and the hairpin. I could have tapped him, we were running so close, but that’s not my style. I set it up to get the best launch I could off the turn onto the front straight so I could sling shot out to pass him. I did and my nose was even with his door as we crossed the start/finish line side by side. So close! I just barely lost that drag race, by just .015 seconds! Dicing in close quarters like that is what Trans-Am racing is all about! We gave our great Canadian fans a thrilling race.”
Ruman is 13th overall in the Trans-Am Series Championship points standings.
On Deck – Trans-Am Race – Saturday, August 17, Road America, Elkart Lake, WI, which will be broadcast Sunday August 18 on Speed Channel 12:00-1:30pm (ET)
