Randy Weaver
Just over three months ago, Randy Weaver was competing in a Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series event at the East Alabama Motor Speedway. On lap 25 of that race, the Crossville, Tenn. native experienced a life changing moment when his car slipped over the dirt berm that rings the outside of the track then went for a wild rollover crash that severely damaged his Longhorn Chassis. However, the driver initially appeared to be unharmed by the accident.
That later proved to not be the case as Weaver has been noticeably absent from the Dirt Late Model racing scene since that devastating wreck.
“The biggest thing was after the wreck on April 2nd, I had been fine until May 5th,” Weaver explained in an interview with InsideDirtRacing.com. “Then I went out to eat with a friend of mine on his birthday and we were just sitting there eating and all of a sudden everybody kind of got moving around like they were in a bubble and I got real hot and clammy then I felt dizzy with my head hurting. We hurried and left there and I went home and tried to suffer through it.”
The racing veteran eventually realized that he would have to seek medical care as his symptoms became significantly worse. And those symptoms have been unbearable throughout much of his time away from the track.
“That was on a Thursday and my doctor was out of town until Monday,” he pointed out. “Since then, we’ve been to the doctor a couple of times and they ruled it as post-concussion syndrome. Even though I didn’t have just a real hard blow to the head, it was so violent that it probably rattled my brain enough that it came back as post-concussion. That went on for about three weeks of everyday with unbelievable stomach pain that goes with this along and headaches with dizziness.”
But Weaver’s initial trip to the doctor did not provide the relief he had hoped for. Ultimately, he had to venture to another part of the state in hopes of finding a cure for his ailment.
“I mean it was pretty tough,” he declared. “It finally got so bad that I went to the emergency room twice by ambulance then I went to Vanderbilt once to the emergency room, my sister actually works down there, and they probably helped me more than anything. They went in there and kind of flushed my system of all the medicine that the local ER had me on and they gave me five or six different drugs that go together to help with traumatic migraine cluster headaches, which is what they ruled I had when the spell hit.”
The prognosis for post-concussion syndrome is an inexact one at best. But there is one thing the doctor has declared to be impossible during the driver’s recovery.
“They said that sometimes it takes a month for this to hit and it usually lasts anywhere from one to three months, but they have seen it last for a year. We’ve just been praying and trying to not overdo anything and the doctor said definitely don’t get in a race car again.”
Weaver began to believe that he was feeling well enough to race in the May 21st Southern Nationals Bonus Series event held on his home track. However, a brief return to the cockpit proved otherwise.
Randy Weaver piloting his familiar No. 116 machine
“I had actually got to feeling better the week before the Crossville race so I ran out there on Monday and rented the track to make some laps because I thought I was going to be okay, wanting to race at my home track,” the 47-year-old said. “I really paid for that. I was down for two weeks after that. I just really don’t know what’s going to happen but I go back to my doctor next Monday(July 11) and he’s going to survey the damage and do some tests. He told me the last time I saw him that after July 11th I’d probably need one more appointment after that. He said from everything he can tell from his experience that I’m going to be out for a couple of months anyway before he would release me.”
Despite the violence of the April 2nd crash, Weaver never lost consciousness. And the driver had many of the features that racers rely on for safety at his disposal.
“I sat there and rode through every bit of it,” he recalled in a telephone interview. “We took our helmet to the hospital and looked it over and checked everything. There wasn’t just one complete blow to the head. I think it just happened so quick and your head in between those containment seats was just like a racket ball in between two walls. I had my Hans Device on and that kept me from going forward, but the side-to-side is what they think really did it. They say it just heals over time and with some people it takes longer than others. It just depends and there’s no way of speeding up the recovery. All they can do is kind of knock the edges off the symptoms that you’re having and you have to wait it out.”
The results of the incident have been traumatizing for the highly successful racer with hundreds of feature wins to his credit.
Weaver and crew have paid plenty of visits to victory lanes all over the southeast
“It’s been tough, I’ll tell you,” Weaver insisted. “I don’t wish this on nobody. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever gone through, from the anxiety that I’ve never had in my life to being depressed half the time. You can’t control your mind early on with this thing, but we’ve prayed a lot and read a lot and hopefully it will get back to 100%.”
The uncertainty of it all is perhaps the most worrisome aspect of the entire situation.
“The thing I feel really helpless about is that there’s nothing they can really do about it,” the driver known as ‘The Dream’ said. “They can identify it and they can tell you what to expect. They do have medication to help the cluster migraines, but it isn’t like taking out a gall bladder or an appendix and you’ll be sore for a couple of weeks then you’ll be good. That’s what’s kind of scary about it, they understand what’s going on but there’s no way to really fix it. I’ve got a migraine pill I take when I feel one coming on, but the last one I had was last Tuesday when I was visiting with my mom and we were watching the Pat Summitt stuff on TV. That one took me out for a couple of days.”
And what’s worse for Weaver than having to sit out of races is the toll his injuries have taken on his personal life.
“During those first three weeks, I struggled just to take a shower,” he explained. “I had to miss my son’s graduation, my daughter’s archery shoot in the nationals but I did go and watch her shoot in the world finals. There’s a lot of things there that I don’t get back because of this stuff. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go or I wasn’t trying, there was just no way.”
This very active man who not only races on the weekends but builds and works on cars throughout the week has been almost completely sidelined of late, and that is proving to be more than a little difficult. However, an able substitute driver was found to compete in some events in the No. 116 machine.
“I’ve been pretty much home,” Weaver said. “I’ve been at the shop, no where near all day, probably six or seven times in the last month-and-a-half. Before that, I pretty much lived here. My guys have been doing good and we’ve had a lot of shop work. Of course, Jonathan Davenport has went and raced for me a few times and we’ve tested with him some. Everything is still flowing good, it’s just that I haven’t been able to be a part of it.”
Life for Weaver is about more than just racing. Right now, the driver hopes to simply get back to the simpler aspects of day-to-day living.
“If I could just get back to everyday activities, that would be unbelievable. I’d love to just get to that point and at least be able to come to the shop and work. I can get here for a little while but when they start making a lot of noise and two or three people talking or something that agitates it a little and then I’ve got to get somewhere quiet. Hopefully on Monday I’ll have a good report and maybe it will be just another month.”
After the experience of the past few weeks, one thing Weaver is sure of is that he is not willing to risk permanent injury just for the sake of climbing back into a race car.
“He (the doctor) did mention that we have to see what goes on, some people heal different, that there’s a possibility that I might need to let somebody else drive. I hope that’s not the case, but if he gives me a 99.9% recovery and there’s still that .1% that I might have to go back through this and put my family through this again, I’m out. It’s got to be 100% without a doubt that I’m good to go, and I think it will be. It’s the roughest thing I’ve ever went through.”
