To say that 2014 was a year filled with ups and downs for Randy Weaver would be an incredible understatement. The Crossville, Tenn. racer scored eleven feature victories during the season, including the most lucrative win of his career and a streak that saw him win every race he entered in the month of July. At the same time, however, the 45-year-old driver suffered great personal loss when his father passed away following a battle with pancreatic cancer.
“It was definitely an emotional year for me,” Weaver explained. “My dad and I were very, very close. He’s the one who got me involved in racing back in Indiana when he was campaigning cars for ASA, building his own race cars for all the asphalt tracks up there. He never did drive, he always had a driver. Because of that, I’ve been around it all my life and really never considered doing anything but racing.”
But with all the personal strife, Weaver was at the same time piecing together what was perhaps the best racing season throughout all his time in racing. He managed to score the highest paying win of his career when he captured the $15,000-to-win Coors Light Fall Classic at Mississippi’s Whynot Motorsports Park. Even with that success, however, the son never took his focus off his ailing father.
“We spent a lot of time together at the end,” Weaver recalled. “A lot of people might not know it, but when they said he had cancer, I was going to quit racing and spend every second I could with him. He didn’t want any part of that. He said that is a big part of our relationship so we made a deal that as long as he wouldn’t give up on the treatments, I wouldn’t give up on racing.
“I promised him I would try to fill up his fireplace mantle with trophies and it lucked up and that we won eleven times from that point on. His fireplace held ten trophies so the last one we got sat in the floor before he passed away the next week.”
Weaver won eleven times during 2014 in his Longhorn Chassis.
With that year of both triumph and tragedy now behind him, Weaver intends to make the most of the upcoming season. Not only does the former Southern All Stars champion hope to win races, he wants to do so with a purpose.
“This year, we’re just going to try to race and have fun,” Weaver declared. “Last year we raced to try to keep my dad upbeat and this year we’re going to race to honor his memory.”
According to their driver, the Outlaw Racing Southeast team is well positioned to succeed. And Weaver hopes he and his team will be able to take full advantage of all the resources at their disposal.
“We’ve still got our same crew and we even added one new guy,” Weaver said. “I’ve got all the confidence in the world in those guys. Chip and Rusty Stone, who actually own the race team, have given us the best racing equipment you could have. If I can’t win in this stuff, I probably need to be doing something else.
“I think our race team is solid,” he added. “I feel like I’ve got a shot to win every race I go to, not that anything is a guarantee, but we’ve got the equipment to do it and we’ve got a good group of guys and a good group of sponsors that make it all happen.”
Weaver’s recent win at the Bama Bash at the East Alabama Motor Speedway was the 350th feature victory of his career. But with all the success he has behind him, the driver feels as though he is in the best situation of his career right now.
“I have had a lot of good situations,” he pointed out. “I’ve heard Jimmy Owens say that everything we have, we owe to someone else, and I’ve had a lot of good people throughout the years who have helped me and stuck their necks out for me. I couldn’t be here today without that. But as far as the opportunity to have the people I have around me and to drive the stuff I get to drive, this is the best situation I’ve ever been in. I’m really blessed to be in this seat.”
Weaver has his eyes focused on winning big races in 2015.
With that being the case, Weaver plans to hit the biggest races with the toughest competition.
“We’re going to go to some places that we haven’t been to but have always wanted to go to,” he declared. “We’re going to go to Wheatland for the $30,000 race out there(Show-me 100 at Lucas Oil Speedway in Missouri). We went there once before but we weren’t really prepared to be there. I like the facility and I think the race track fits us.
“We going to do a little more travelling like that,” he continued. “But of course, when we’re home we’re going to go to the races close by like this weekend at Cleveland and Boyd’s(Southern Nationals Bonus Series). Our goal is just to have some fun and capitalize on the good equipment we have. It’s more of an outlaw schedule where we’re going to go to the places that make sense. We’re going to go to both the races at Eldora. We were quick up there last year but things just didn’t fall our way. I’m looking forward to jumping out and going all over the country this year.”
So what will it take for Weaver to label the 2015 campaign as a successful one?
“I honestly think that we’re in the equipment that, even though races are harder to win now, we could win 15 races or more. I want to win some good races. I’d like it to be a year where we could look back and say we went to some of the hardest hitting races in the country for that weekend and won them. I know that’s going to be tough to do and I’m not saying it’s going to be a guarantee by any stretch. But I think if we could put everything together on those weekends, we’ve got a shot to win some of those races.”
