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Written by:
Bill Wood
RACER Magazine http://www.racer.com
RACER Magazine http://www.racer.com
06/11/2007 - 07:00 PM
Los Angeles, Calif.
Lagemann and co-driver Mark Williams finished second at The Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally is known for its water crossings. (Isabel Parra Photography) » More Photos
How and why competitors get fast behind the wheel is always an interesting story. Usually, it's hard work and normally that hard work is buffed by mentoring. For example, the presence of legendary American champion John Buffum and former World Rally Champion Colin McRae at Vermont Sports Car during the X Games last year probably helped Travis Pastrana win the Rally America Championship in 2006. Coincidently, those same lessons have pushed Pastrana's X Games teammates Ken Block and Tanner Foust to the top-five of the Rally America points heap in 2007.
Standing in sixth, an event down, is Ramana Lagemann who received his mentoring several years ago from more than one source. From those lessons, Lagemann is one of the hottest drivers in the Rally America series after winning the Olympus Rally last month with a last-stage pass, and a second at STPR a couple weeks ago, the last two events this season. In 2002 and 2003 Lagemann was a teammate to former WRC driver Mark Lovell who headlined the Subaru America rally team from 2001 until his tragic death during the Oregon Trail Rally in July of 2003.
"He had a reputation of being kind of hard to deal with," Ramana said of Lovell. "He (wanted) perfection. He demanded 100 percent and he gave 100 percent. We had dinner together the night before he died and we talked about quite a few things."
Lovell was a Brit who won the 1986 British Rally Championship, the 1987 Irish Tarmac Rally Championship, the 1988 International Dutch Rally Drivers' Championship and the 2001 SCCA ProRally Drivers' Championship. He also won the 2003 Pikes Peak International Hillclimb only two weeks before his death. Ramana was second at Pikes Peak.
Lovell and his co-driver Roger Freeman were both killed when their Subaru Impreza WRX left the road at high speed and struck a tree shortly after the start of the rally's first stage.
Lagemann and co-driver Mark Williams finished second at The Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally is known for its water crossings. (Isabel Parra Photography) » More Photos
"It took some time for him to believe in me, maybe five or six months. But quickly after that our bond grew stronger and stronger," Lagemann said. "He helped me with everything from preparing for rallies to driving the car
Buffum told me he's witnessed a different Ramana this season. "He's had time to think about things and now is a more mature person, which shows up in his driving."
Even before Lovell, Lagemann got some mentoring help from Lance Smith, a former rally driver and co-driver who is currently the principle at Vermont Sports Car. Starting in 1999 when he ran his first event, Ramana's rally efforts literally were in the ditches. He asked Smith to co-drive with him in 2000 at The Rally of The Tall Pines in Ontario, Canada.
After a first-stage disaster the pair jelled. "We had some top three or top four stage times. For me it was fantastic and a confirmation of what I thought I could do.
"At the end of the rally, he strongly encouraged me to get in a Subaru the next year."
In 2001, Smith was running the Subaru/Prodrive program here in the U.S. with Lovell on board. Lagemann ran in the team's shadow in his own Subaru. When it came time for them to select a second 2002 driver, Smith and Prodrive set up a "Gong Show" talent search in the UK with Lagemann, Karl Scheible who was already driving for the team and Patrick Richard.
"The one thing I remember is that we all drove terribly," Ramana said with a chuckle. During the mock rally and other tests, Lagemann said "the pressure was more intense than any rally and we all made stupid mistakes. So when they sat me down in the back room and offered me the deal, it was the last thing I expected."
The years Lagemann spent with Subaru were fruitful. The resumé shows a sixth in 2002 and a third in 2003 in the U.S. national championship. In 2003, Ramana became the first American since 1990 to contest a round of the World Rally Championship when he competed in the Rally of New Zealand. He finished 10th in a production-based class. Subaru offered a car for selected U.S. events in 2004 and, in his "spare time" that season, Ramana won a Northeast Division National Karting Championship in a Rotax RM1 go-kart.
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