For Immediate Release: April 17, 2007
Contact: Amy Ruman 330.813.2323 cell
Munroe Falls, OH – The unusual happened at Summit Point Raceway, WV this past weekend – SCCA shortened the National event to a one day show due to bad weather. Drivers qualified and raced on the same day, completing the event late Saturday. The Ruman sisters finished respectfully with Amy in 2nd and Niki in 16th position. Bob Ruman chose not to race Spec Racer due to the shortened event schedule, which made his Crew Chief duties rather non-stop.
All three Ruman’s practiced on Friday’s test day in partly sunny and dry weather. The forecast for Saturday was up and down and turned out to be dry until the later part of the day. Spec Racer was group 4 and GT-1 was group 8, giving Niki a mostly dry race and Amy a wet/dry track for the start.
Niki qualified the #23 Rumanracing.com Spec Racer 18th in a deep, 31 car field. “I had a bum start and lost about 4 positions on the front straight, but I was able to gather things back up and take some positions back in the first few laps. Towards the end of the race, we had a few sprinkles of rain which made a few of the corners slippery, but the track conditions were generally good. I enjoyed the battles throughout the race!” commented Niki.
Amy qualified the #23 McNichols Co. Corvette on the pole with the only other GT-1, Bill Rozmajzl qualifying in 3rd position. It turned out that the Ruman Team helped fix their only competitor’s car after it broke during qualifying. “A bracket for the alternator needed welded on Bill’s car and we had a welder, so Mike fixed it for them,” stated Bob Ruman. “In auto racing, we are one big family and we all help each other when we can. Plus, Amy wanted to race with someone else since people packed up and left, or did not come to the event due to the nasty weather.”
The team rolled up to the grid on rain tires but the track was drying fast, forcing the crew to change to slicks on pit lane under the ‘5 minute” warning. “Bryan and Mike were awesome! They got those tires changed in 3-4 minutes, just in time for me to roll off the grid to start the race,” exclaimed Amy.
Ruman started the race and immediately jumped out to a strong lead. Ruman kept the lead and eventually stretched it 12-13 seconds. Ruman kept dropping her times – getting down to a 1:13.1, which was close to her qualifying time of a 1:12.9. Unfortunately, it did not stay dry for the whole race, and it started raining fairly hard with 6 laps to go. Ruman tried to be cautious, but spun coming out of turn 2, with 3 laps to go. She had trouble keeping the car running to get turned around, and Bill passed her. The track was too wet and there was too much of a gap for Ruman to regain the lead, leaving her to finish in second place.
“I was disappointed in myself as a driver. The crew worked so hard and then I came up short. It is difficult to negotiate these cars in the wet – the slightest wheel spin can send you right around. The race was ours to win, and unfortunately it slipped away in an instant!” stated Ruman.
Next up: May 6 – SCCA National at New Hampshire International Speedway
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