9/30/2014
Ramey Charges To Sweet Springs Win
(Photo by Hale Photography)
SWEET SPRINGS, Mo. – In action on two consecutive nights to close out the 2014 regular season at Sweet Springs Motorsports Complex, Gunner Ramey took his fifth career feature win, then picked up a top-five to lock up the third position in the restrictor class points at the one-sixth mile clay oval.
The weekend’s events commenced with heat race action on Friday night, with the #28 starting last in his heat, picking up one position to finish fifth.
When it came feature time, Ramey was eighth on the starting grid for the 25-lap race. A caution on the initial start moved him up one row to sixth. On the complete restart, he picked off two more cars on lap one before the yellow, running in the fourth spot when the field came to life once more. He made quick work of the third- and second-place runners, taking a lap each to navigate around them. At this point, he had already moved up six spots in three laps, and fixated his toils on the leader, his teammate Braydon Renfro. He closed in over the next two laps, positioning his Cleveland/Honda on the bottom of the speedway entering turn three on lap five. Renfro’s #4 went to the high side, leaving Ramey room to make his move off of four. He’d still be scored second by a fraction of a second at the line, but again used the inside to complete the pass and take the lead off the second turn. Pulling away over the next five laps, he appeared to have the win in the bag. However, not to be deterred, Renfro started to reel Ramey back in. By lap ten, the two were nose-to-tail, and raced as such for ten more laps. Lapped traffic started to come into play with five laps left, and the duo was nearly side-by-side at one point. Ramey showed great poise traversing the slower traffic, pulling back away and netting his third win of 2014. Unbeknownst to the #28 crew during the race, the incident on the original start broke his chain tensioner, which can leave the chain vulnerable to coming off. “I heard the chain clicking really loud at the end,” the driver revealed, but he certainly had no plans of heading for the pits while leading.
With the tensioner back in order, the team looked to repeat on Saturday night, kicking things off with a heat race win from the pole position.
Saturday’s main event lineup listed Ramey in the 7th spot, but trouble for the young driver came with one lap complete when he spun to a stop. He was sent to the tail of the field for the restart, but when the polesitter stopped, he too was penalized and directed to the rear, meaning Ramey would restart ninth. He quickly got back to his starting spot once green flag conditions resumed, passing two cars on lap two. He settled into the seventh position, running there for the next 18 legs of the race. The second-place car went to the infield with 20 down and 5 to go, picking up the sixth spot, then one more pass in the waning laps captured a fifth-place finish, his 16th top-five thus far in 2014.
Ramey would like to thank Impact Signs, SureCoat Powdercoating, Ramey Dirtworks, Southwest Storage, Rob Sneed Shorthorn Farms, 8760 Service Group, Liquid Designs, Sun Loan, McKinney Construction, Rod End Supply, and Quick Engineering, as well as his parents and sister, Tyler Ramey, Kyle and Tracy Houston, the Cornell family, and Chad Cypert for their continued support.
Ramey is next scheduled to compete on October 3 and 4 at Atchison County Raceway in Atchison, KS for their ‘Fall Brawl’ in the #28 600cc restrictor entry.
Season Stats
22 races, 3 wins, 16 top fives, 20 top tens, 2 DNFs
Social Media
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/RameyRacing28
Article Credit: Redbeard Promotions
