Ray Bramall Honored As Car Owner By Northeast Dirt Modified Hall Of Fame

Story By: BUFFY SWANSON / NORTHEAST DIRT MODIFIED HALL OF FAME – WEEDSPORT, NY – Ray Bramall of Newburgh, NY, will be honored with the 2018 Gene DeWitt Car Owner Award when the 27th annual Northeast Dirt Modified Hall of Fame induction ceremonies are held on July 26 at the Hall of Fame and Museum on the grounds of Weedsport Speedway in New York.

A truck mechanic by trade, Bramall worked three jobs in his younger years until he had saved enough money to buy his own dealership at age 26. One of his trucking employees had a son, Chuck LoPresti, racing at nearby Orange County Fair Speedway. So Bramall began helping him out.

Ray was no stranger to the sport: As a kid, he had followed racers Joe Lawrence and D.D. Harris from track to track. “I had always wanted to own a car,” he remembered.

Bramall sponsored LoPresti for a year. Then bought him a Tony Feil engine. Then a trailer. Then they built a car for Syracuse, in 1988. When that racer got wrecked, Bramall bought a new Olsen frame. His involvement kept picking up steam.

The full-bore freight train arrived that winter, when Modified star Brett Hearn pulled up at Bramall’s door, looking for a ride. Three new Olsens were purchased. Engines too. Ray set up a complete race shop at the truck dealership, lacking for nothing, and reassigned big-rig mechanic Charlie DeAngelis to work full-time on the race cars.

Almost immediately, Bramall’s Freightliner Trucks of Newburgh #6 became one of the most celebrated Modified teams to compete on the DIRT circuit. In 1989, they clicked for 28 wins, including Super DIRT Series trail events at Rolling Wheels, the NYS Fairgrounds, Lebanon Valley and Can-Am; season-ending small-block specials at Syracuse and Eastern States; and the Flemington 200. The following year they topped even that, winning just about everything in sight: 38 victories at 11 tracks, highlighted by big scores at PA International, Lebanon Valley, Autodromes Granby and Drummond, Weedsport, Ransomville, Five Mile Point, Rolling Wheels, Flemington, and a complete sweep of Super DIRT Week — both the Modified and small-block events.

The Freightliner steamroller sped onward in 1991, recording another 33 wins, culminating with their second Miller 300 victory at Super DIRT Week in as many years. With Hearn behind the wheel and Hall of Fame mechanic DeAngelis turning the wrenches, in the course of three seasons Bramall racked up 99 wins, three SDS Mod titles, the overall Mr. DIRT Modified crown, two DIRT Asphalt Series championships, three Modified and three small-block titles at Orange County, and a Mod Championship at Rolling Wheels.

“We just about won ’em all,” Ray recounted. “We had (purpose-built) cars for the blacktop series, for Syracuse. There were times we’d have five or six cars in the shop, and we’d go out on the road with three — two big-blocks and a small-block.”

And then, as suddenly as it had started, Brett Hearn was gone. And, without a hitch or a hesitation, Danny Johnson was in the coveted seat of the Freightliner Express for 1992.

The driver change entailed switching the team’s entire stable from Olsen cars to Troyers, Johnson’s chassis of choice.

But they didn’t miss a beat. Over the next seven years, Ray and Danny won 92 times, starting with a DIRT Asphalt Series event at PA International Speedway in the spring of 1992 and ending with a Super DIRT Series race at Weedsport in September 1998. In between, the team took both the SDS and overall Mr. DIRT Mod series titles in ’92 and ’97; Mr. DIRT 358 and 358 series championships in 1996; a pair of 358 point titles at Orange County and another two at Ransomville; one at Rolling Wheels; three Eastern States 200 victories; two Eastern States small-block races; the 1994 Syracuse 358 event; and — the mother of them all — the 1997 Super DIRT Week 300. It would be Ray’s third time winning that big one on the NYS Fairgrounds mile, and Danny’s first.

Car owner Bramall compared the two series stars. “They were completely different. Brett was a smart driver. Really smart. But Danny had more natural ability than anyone I’ve ever seen. Danny was hands-on — he’d crawl right under the car and get it done,” Ray said. “Brett would come all prepared, ready to race. Danny would be the one who’d forget to bring his helmet.”

“They had an empire going there,” said Charlie Langenstein, who replaced Charlie DeAngelis as crew chief on the Freightliner team in 1997, after DeAngelis departed for a rival outfit. Langenstein, also a Hall of Fame mechanic, felt the pressure to perform. “It was like George Steinbrenner: You were expected to win. You had to win!” he recalled. “When I walked into that deal with Danny Johnson, second wasn’t an option. We had to beat Brett. And Brett had to beat the #6 car. It was high stress.”

That tension rose to the top, coupled with the fact that the racing operation was taking its toll on Bramall’s business. “It gets to be a sickness. You’re doing good. You know what it feels like to win. And you’ll do anything to keep winning,” Ray reflected, ticking off the blown motors, the over-the-road runs for parts, the superhuman efforts to keep the cars in victory lane. And all the dollars spent.

In early 1999, abruptly, Bramall quit dead-cold, selling out his entire operation for a song.

“That was the end of it,” Ray said. “I’ve never been to a race since.”

But his remarkable accomplishments remain. And the memories.

“My wife, my kids, all the people who worked for me — they all loved it,” Ray said of life on the road with the race cars. Meanwhile, he was most often back at home base, keeping the business going and paying the bills, while wife Pattie, daughter Dana and younger son Jason were out following the tour schedule. “We’d have the motor home at Syracuse, the cooker going, and it was just one big party. We had a lot of fun.”

Bramall succinctly summed up his stellar 10-year stint as one of the most successful car owners on the DIRT circuit: “It was great while it lasted.”