Dressed in business casual and sitting behind her desk at Cuyahoga Falls-based Cenweld Corp., Amy Ruman doesn’t give off many hints about her second job. Every evening when she is done at the office, she controls the keys to a souped-up Corvette with a 358 cubic inch, 810 horsepower engine.
A professional race car driver, Ruman finished first in her final race of the season last month in the Steel Cities Region Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) Trans Am Series, a national pro-car racing circuit, becoming the first woman in the series’ 45-year history to win a Trans-Am race.
A rarity in the male dominated professional motor racing, Ruman is the only regular female competitor in the Trans Am series.
“Everyone asks me what it’s like to be a woman race car driver, but I don’t think of it that way,” she said. “It’s a sport where men and women can compete against each other — when you put on your helmet and get in the car, you’re just a race car driver.”
The title more important to Ruman is as the first person in her family to win a professional race.
Ruman doesn’t remember a time in her life when she wasn’t around the sport of racing.
As Ruman was growing up, both of her parents raced. After Bob Ruman met his wife, Barb, while working as employees of BF Goodrich, his passion for Corvettes grew into involvement in the National Council of Corvette Clubs, and eventually racing the cars.
“We were track rat kids,” Amy Ruman says of herself and her older sister, Niki. “We would go to the track all the time.”
Bob never seemed to care about having boys, because both of his daughters followed in his footsteps, Amy says.
“He’s always had us, and we’ve always been in the garage with him,” she said. “We were pals and we still are.”
When she and Niki hit 18, they were both competing in autocross — a motor sport on a closed track that involves maneuvering cars between obstacles.
Amy moved up through amateur and club motor sport series, and into the pros in Trans Am in 2005 after her dad faced a bout with kidney cancer and let her drive the Ruman Racing Corvette in his place while he was recovering.
Now with a clean bill of health, Bob leads Amy’s pit crew in a true family affair. Amy’s cousin and brother-in-law are both part of the Ruman Racing team, as well as several longtime employees of Cenweld, a Ruman family-owned truck body company.
Speaking in the Cenweld shop, Ruman laughs when she explains that she has to own her own business in order to keep up with the time and money that professional racing demands. She is sponsored by McNichols Co. and Goodyear and hopes that her first-place win at the end of this season will open new doors for sponsorships.
Since her first pro race at the Cleveland Grand Prix, Amy has been climbing toward the top of the leaderboard but has never been able to break third place.
“Winning a Trans Am has been my main focus for the past few years and I’ve been oh-so-close so many times,” she said.
In the Sept. 30 race at Road Atlanta in Braselton, Ga., Ruman held in third place for much of the roughly 100-mile race, until a mechanical issue took one of her competitors out toward the end. With a dwindling number of laps remaining, the race was called on a yellow flag — meaning there was a crash on the track with debris that could inhibit other drivers — with Ruman ahead of her closest competitor, Michael Lewis.
This season, Ruman competed in all but one Trans-Am races at eight tracks around the country, from the Sebring International Raceway in Florida to the Mosport International Raceway outside of Toronto. She placed third in overall Trans Am standings.
This year, she plans to race in every event in a new car with suspension and brake upgrades.
Ruman doesn’t flinch when she says that her next goal is to follow up with more wins and take the championship.
“There are some guys that rag, ‘I can’t be beat by a girl,’ or ‘I can’t go back to the office on Monday or I’ll get nothing but hassles,’ ” Ruman said. “Usually they’re joking, but I think deep down, sometimes they are bothered by it.”
It doesn’t bother Ruman. For the most part, she has earned the respect of her male colleagues as she has proved herself over the years as a serious competitor.
She’s more concerned about the adrenaline racing provides.
“There’s nothing like going that fast,” said Ruman who has been up to 178 mph. “I don’t think I’ve seen 180. Every other guy would be like, ‘I’ve run 185.’ I’m pretty straight and narrow; I don’t need to bend the truth.”
At those speeds, she realizes the risks of the sport, but she doesn’t dwell on it. Though she has been involved in a number of accidents in her career, she points out that she could just as easily have an accident on state Route 8.
“When it’s in your blood, it’s in your blood,” she said. “And it’s in my blood.”
