How a Cornwall kid fast-tracked his passion for racing.
Growing up, Ramsay Trew had a one-track mind for fixing up bikes, ATVs, cars and trucks. He spent endless hours tinkering and modifying them and poring over magazines featuring his favourite racing stars. He dreamt of a life in the dynamic world of endurance racing and high performance cars.
When puberty hit, Ramsay put down his tools and picked up a new passion: snowboarding. He competed in slopestyle and big air, first on small hills across Ontario and Quebec. Then at 19, he headed for the big mountains of the West. He settled into an exciting rhythm in Whistler and in total, spent seven years competing and living the high life until one day, he had a massive anxiety attack on the chairlift. It was eventually diagnosed as an extreme disorder, similar to agoraphobia. That put an abrupt end to his snowboarding career.
I love the direct feedback you get with racing. When you start having a swing and the car really starts waking up, there’s a rush. Instant gratification.
—Ramsay Trew
So Ramsay, then 27, made the move to Vancouver and went back to first love. He enrolled in an automotive program, worked for one the best performance shops in the city, and got involved in drifting, a sport where drivers force their cars to lose traction through the turns. Ramsay calls it “the figure skating of car racing”.
By 2011, he had moved into a comfortable position working for Bullet Racing, a top shop that specialized Porsche racing and service. That’s where he got his hands dirty as a mechanic and fabricator, and also, as part of the pit crew. His in-the-action experiences really fuelled his fire and he jumped from opportunity to opportunity. By 2018, he found himself opening his own high-performance car shop and working for two of Canada’s most well-known race teams, Pfaff Motorsports and Compass Racing. He loved working as head mechanic, chassis engineer, and pit crew member. It was a life of tuning Audis, Porsche, and McLarens, and being a team member at big-time races like the Pirelli World Challenge, 24 Hours of Rolex, and 25 Hours of Thunderhill.
But Ramsay found his fatigue was compounding. His intense professional racing schedule saw him criss-crossing the continent from the West Coast to races on the Eastern Seaboard.
“I had more than 60 flights that year,” he explains. “I’d get home to Vancouver after a race and have only 48 hours before I was on the road again. It was nuts.”
At the end of summer last year, the 38-year-old packed up his tools and headed home to Cornwall. He felt pushed out by the busyness and cost of living in Vancouver, and pulled in by thoughts of spending more time with his family. He set up shop in a cavernous garage located off Boundary Road, a stone’s throw from the 401, offering car repair and mechanic services, as well as high-end specialty services. And though the pandemic postponed his plans to do stints as a hired gun for various racing teams, he has once again found himself where he belongs. Back on track.
Portrait by Jason McNamara / Framed Photography
