Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Randy Lanier’s Road Back to Racing
Transcript
- 0:00BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from
- 0:04all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors,
- 0:09designers, and everything in between.
- 0:11Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder How did they
- 0:17get that job or become that person?
- 0:19The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
- 0:27One day in 2015, I got an email from a stranger named Mike
- 0:31Carr, who lived in Pennsylvania.
- 0:33He told me he raced a BMW and that he'd read about my story in a magazine.
- 0:37He wanted to know if I'd team up with him for an endurance
- 0:40race at mid Ohio coming up.
- 0:42I stared at the words on my computer screen for a long
- 0:44time, wondering how to respond.
- 0:47My prosecuting attorney's name was Michael Carr.
- 0:50This stranger reaching out with the same name?
- 0:52I don't know what to make of it.
- 0:53Finally, I typed the words, Is this a joke?
- 0:56Nope, not a joke.
- 0:58That's a quote from the 2022 book Survival of the Fastest Weed Speed and
- 1:03the 1980s drug scandal that shocked the sports world by Randy Lanier.
- 1:07And with that, please join me in welcoming both Mike Carr and Randy
- 1:12Lanier to Break Fix, along with special guest co host GTMer Tom Newman to tell
- 1:17the rest of this incredible story.
- 1:19So welcome to the show, gentlemen.
- 1:21Thank you.
- 1:22And Mike, uh, happy to be here with you.
- 1:25Uh, pretty awesome.
- 1:27Thank you.
- 1:27It's been a fun, fun time.
- 1:30So normally on this show, we would start off by asking, let's
- 1:33get down to the who, what, where, and when of your origin story.
- 1:36But in this case, we can quickly and easily fall back on both the
- 1:40book survival of the fastest and an episode entitled the need for weed on
- 1:45Netflix's documentary series, bad sport.
- 1:48So let's leave that to the side and talk about.
- 1:50Where is Randy Lanier now, starting from those last two pages of the book,
- 1:56where our introductory quote came from?
- 1:58Mike, you're mentioned almost at the very end of this book, and the reader
- 2:02is left, and myself included, left wondering, is the man who invited Randy
- 2:07to the track the same former assistant U.
- 2:09S.
- 2:09attorney, Mike Carr?
- 2:10If not, what's your connection to Randy?
- 2:13I'm an attorney, but I am not a prosecutor, worked for the public
- 2:17defender's office for a while.
- 2:18Wow.
- 2:19I think it was 2014, Jalopnik came out with a story about Randy
- 2:24getting released from prison.
- 2:25And I knew of Randy from when I was a little kid.
- 2:28I'm from a town called Doylestown, Pennsylvania, which is the
- 2:32home of legendary racers, Bob Holbert and Al Holbert.
- 2:37My family was friends with the Holbert family and we would travel to places
- 2:41like Watkins Glen and, you know, different tracks around the country.
- 2:44To watch Al drive.
- 2:45Randy was kicking Al's butt in this unsponsored blue car, you know,
- 2:52Al's driving a Porsche factory, nine 62 and Randy is beating him.
- 2:57I had heard rumors at the time.
- 2:59I'm probably like maybe 14, 15 years old, that there was drug money involved
- 3:04with John Paul senior and John Paul jr.
- 3:06And that the lack of sponsorship might be a result of.
- 3:10Some, you know, sort of under the table type stuff.
- 3:14And I was fascinated as a teenager, I didn't really follow Randy's story
- 3:20until it came back 27 years later.
- 3:23And Randy was getting out.
- 3:24Randy made a mistake in the book.
- 3:26That wasn't an email that I sent him.
- 3:28I sent him an actual letter.
- 3:30On paper, he was in a halfway house.
- 3:32I had no idea what kind of access to email he had, but at
- 3:35the time I was racing with AER.
- 3:38Give you a little bit of background on the Rally Baby team that
- 3:40enabled me to bring Randy out.
- 3:42We started racing Lemons in 2010.
- 3:47None of us knew what we were doing.
- 3:49I'm from a family that was into cars.
- 3:51You know, racing was always aspirational.
- 3:53And it seemed like there was a high wall to get over in order to get on the track.
- 3:57When lemons came along, we built a car and then we built another car and then
- 4:01we built another car and then we built another car and we got a guy on the team
- 4:05who was a really good cage builder, which facilitated us turning into a big race.
- 4:10In 2013, I think we were running like 40 drivers and maybe 10 or 12
- 4:16cars that enabled us to win the 2013 national championship with lemons.
- 4:21And then AER came along and we're like, well, let's jump to there.
- 4:25And that's where I met Randy.
- 4:26And I'm like, I want to take Randy to AER.
- 4:30And it worked out the way it did, which was pretty good.
- 4:33That's actually how Mike and I met was through the 24 hours of lemons.
- 4:36I was a judge and this is not an exaggeration, but my first introduction
- 4:41to Mike was him groveling to get one of his cars out of the penalty box.
- 4:47Doesn't make sense.
- 4:48Legal expertise, Michael.
- 4:51We were heavily involved with road and track and car and driver and
- 4:56Jalopnik at that point, trying to get the series off the ground.
- 4:59And I said to the guys at Jalopnik, maybe I could do something with Randy.
- 5:04And they're like, yeah, you know, we'll work it.
- 5:06They didn't really do anything.
- 5:07So I just took it upon myself to reach out to Randy and say,
- 5:11Hey, do you want to come drive?
- 5:12We got a race coming up in mid Ohio.
- 5:14I told him my story about having watched him as a kid.
- 5:18I was astonished to get a letter back.
- 5:21It was so great when he said, if you're not the, my car who prosecuted me, I
- 5:25wouldn't be happy to come drive your car.
- 5:28So we set it up.
- 5:29I, it was some work.
- 5:30He had a parole officer who was.
- 5:32Looking over his shoulder pretty tightly.
- 5:34And I don't want to say I made up that he was going to be working as an instructor.
- 5:39I put out that there was an opportunity for people to get instruction from Randy.
- 5:44But I mean, to be honest, Randy hadn't driven a car in 27 years.
- 5:47And so I wasn't kind of certain that he was going to be a good instructor at that
- 5:51point, but I had an old BMW that, uh, we could haul out there and see what we could
- 5:55do, and it seemed like an opportunity.
- 5:57It was too good to pass up.
- 5:59Truth told, I was right.
- 6:01It worked out marvelously.
- 6:03Mike, I want to thank you for recharging my memory because I was at
- 6:08a halfway house and I do remember the letter now and trying to set up an
- 6:14email because everybody was telling me you need to set up emails and I
- 6:18didn't know nothing about emails.
- 6:20Right after the letter, I eventually got my email service.
- 6:25hooked up.
- 6:25And I think I remember emailing you.
- 6:27It was like a big thing for me to get on the email.
- 6:30So thanks Mike, for setting the record straight with the letter.
- 6:34I imagine it was a lot like being part of the Flintstones and
- 6:36then dropped into the Jetsons.
- 6:38Yeah, it was amazing coming out and seeing all the advances with the telephones.
- 6:43I was into beepers and pay phones back in the eighties.
- 6:47And then when I come out in 2014, everybody's on these phones that
- 6:53Tells you directions and ways to go and talks back to you.
- 6:56That was a big change to hear phones talk to you.
- 7:00And with Michael, it was amazing because I was still at the halfway house and for
- 7:04my probation officer to agree to let me go out of state, they was giving me like
- 7:1127 minutes from getting from my job to my halfway house, they would time me.
- 7:16I have to be from when I leave work, I have to be at the halfway
- 7:21house, but then 27 minutes.
- 7:23They had my route figured out that close.
- 7:26They gave me like a few minutes of budget to get over, but they let me go.
- 7:31Mike, I see you're a good attorney cause you negotiated that whale.
- 7:35So Do you remember I was down at the 24 hours of Daytona the year that you were
- 7:41still in the halfway house as a spectator and there was a big snowstorm up East.
- 7:46My flight got delayed because they didn't want to fly out on a Monday
- 7:51morning to this huge snowstorm.
- 7:53And so I had Monday free into Tuesday and I rented the worst rental car
- 7:59I've ever rented in my entire life.
- 8:01And I drove from Daytona down to Lauderdale where you were.
- 8:04And you're like, stop at this place and bring me some stone crabs.
- 8:08I didn't know how much stone crabs cost.
- 8:10I bought like a hundred dollars worth of stone crabs.
- 8:12And we sat with you and your daughter on that picnic bench outside the
- 8:16halfway house, and they kind of got to know each other and ate stone crabs,
- 8:20which was a really good experience.
- 8:22I'd never had them before.
- 8:23And you looked at me and you go, what time's your flight out?
- 8:27Daytona, you got to get in the car.
- 8:31I didn't want to stop talking.
- 8:33I remember that and didn't you missed your flight?
- 8:36I didn't miss my flight.
- 8:37Here's what happened.
- 8:38I had time to either stop to pee or stop to get gas.
- 8:43And I needed gas, but I really needed to pee a whole lot worse.
- 8:47I didn't get gas and I drove that rental car up to the entrance to
- 8:52the airport and I was sitting in a red light and it ran out of gas.
- 8:57I couldn't get into the airport, but I had all kinds of cab numbers in my phone.
- 9:01And so I called a cab and they're all right there at the airport.
- 9:04This cop pulls up and he's like, I'd give you a ride, but
- 9:06look, I'm here on a motorcycle.
- 9:08A cab shows up, runs me the quarter mile into the airport.
- 9:12And I'm sweating and I'm trying to get on the plane and I know
- 9:15I'm going to miss the plane.
- 9:16I don't miss the plane.
- 9:16I get on the plane.
- 9:18I'm with this girl and the flight attendants know that I'm like stressed.
- 9:22They hand me a bottle of water and a paper towel to like wipe the sweat
- 9:26off my head and I'm on the plane.
- 9:29So I'm happy.
- 9:30And this German who was driving at Daytona the day before is sitting
- 9:35behind me and he's speaking German and he says in German, look at that fool.
- 9:40He about missed the flight, and I turned around and I go,
- 9:43Ich kann ein bisschen Deutsch.
- 9:45I let him know that I spoke German, and he quit making fun of me.
- 9:50And I made it home.
- 9:53What happened to the rental car?
- 9:54I threw the keys over the counter, and I said, Your car's out there
- 9:58by the entrance to the airport, and I never heard another word.
- 10:02Yeah, they didn't charge my credit card.
- 10:05It was out of gas.
- 10:06I don't know what they did.
- 10:07I never heard about it.
- 10:08It was great.
- 10:09It was totally worth it though.
- 10:11Like to go have lunch with you.
- 10:12And stone crabs are one of my favorites now.
- 10:15Yeah.
- 10:15Yeah.
- 10:16Stone crabs are delicious.
- 10:18You know, here we are.
- 10:20All right, we're going to make this happen and friends of mine
- 10:24tow the car out on the trailer.
- 10:26I get you at the Columbus airport, and now we've got to drive up to mid Ohio.
- 10:31We get there, we go to the hotel and it's late October.
- 10:34So it's dark out there in the morning.
- 10:36And.
- 10:37We get up in the pitch black at like six 37 o'clock in the
- 10:42morning, get to the track.
- 10:44And I have no idea what to expect at all their own track guys are there.
- 10:49And they're like, you've got Randy Lanier.
- 10:50There's a driver's meeting.
- 10:52And I say at the driver's meeting on Friday, Practice day.
- 10:55I've got Randy Lanier here.
- 10:56If anybody would like him to hop in their car, have at it.
- 11:00But you and I get in the car.
- 11:03Was that the rainy day or was that the race day was rain, Mike?
- 11:06The race day was rainy.
- 11:07Like, the practice day was pretty good.
- 11:10Yeah.
- 11:11And I don't remember whether I drove first or you drove first.
- 11:13I might've driven first so that you could see how crappy a driver
- 11:17I am and, you know, try to help me.
- 11:19You might have driven first so that I could see whether or not
- 11:22you still knew how to drive.
- 11:24Either way, it doesn't matter, but we took turns and we're doing good.
- 11:29It was really fun.
- 11:30And you started hitting your marks.
- 11:32We get into the weekend and the car and driver guys.
- 11:35Say we want him to, and they get you in their car.
- 11:40And so you're in my car for hours.
- 11:42And then you're like, I want lunch.
- 11:44You hop out of my car and they're like, can you get in our car?
- 11:48And you do.
- 11:48And I'm like, you're just driving all day.
- 11:50This is a good time and you're doing well.
- 11:55I'm doing better because of your help because you say here's a wall
- 11:58where you need to get really close to this wall because you're going
- 12:01to come around to the second to last turn and then the last turn.
- 12:04You want to be positioned properly and it's slippery over there
- 12:08and I'm feeling really good.
- 12:09I think maybe this was the second time I'd been there and I felt so much better after
- 12:14we spent some time in the car together and I valued the experience that you gave me.
- 12:20It wasn't BS.
- 12:21I mean it was real good instruction.
- 12:24I know that you were having a flashback.
- 12:25The garage is there haven't changed in 35 years.
- 12:30They're exactly the same plywood, you know, those overhangs that you can
- 12:34look down into them and you were there with your IMSA car and you rolled
- 12:38in with my, you know, crappy, low budget race car, it seemed like you
- 12:42were having the time of your life.
- 12:44I don't know.
- 12:44I, I'm guessing that's the case.
- 12:47You find yourself 2015 behind the wheel of that BMW.
- 12:51And what were you thinking when you strapped in, popped the clutch
- 12:55and took off out the pit exit?
- 12:56Was it all coming back in a flash or?
- 12:59Well, it didn't come back in a flash.
- 13:01It took a few laps.
- 13:02The first time I got in the car, we was having a blast, Michael.
- 13:06And I, I gotta tell you, I, I love that track.
- 13:08The camaraderie that we was all sharing with everybody from
- 13:12Road Track Magazine, Jalopnik.
- 13:14Allow me to drive their BMW and then hopping back into yours.
- 13:19But after the race was over, we ended up at a bar, Casey prime, fantastic place.
- 13:25It was an amazing night.
- 13:27I rented a karaoke machine and we ended up having the time of our life.
- 13:36It was a crew there.
- 13:37I mean, the bar was packed.
- 13:39It was just such a big celebration.
- 13:41I'm out with my freedom.
- 13:43Um, We're doing karaoke with Smuggler's Blues.
- 13:48Thin Lawyer's Guns and Money.
- 13:51Thin Lawyer's Guns and Money and just all of us singing and having
- 13:54the big, I mean, it was just a huge party and it's so much laughter and
- 13:59fun that we didn't want it to end.
- 14:01What do you think of the cars of today, or especially since you've been out
- 14:05compared to when you left and maybe more specifically, the race cars, were you able
- 14:09to keep up when you were on the inside?
- 14:12I watched some races, read a lot of magazines that I could get my hands on.
- 14:17Watching it on TV was difficult.
- 14:19I became a NASCAR fan and I'm not such a NASCAR fan now concerning.
- 14:24The chase point system.
- 14:26I'm not a real big fan of the way that's structured with the chase system.
- 14:31The cause that I was instructing and has so much track assistance.
- 14:35If you use those settings, it kind of takes a little bit away from it
- 14:39because of the ability of the car to correct itself is quite amazing.
- 14:44And, but then also if you use that, you can't really stand on it.
- 14:47Because it doesn't let you stand on it too much.
- 14:51I'd rather drive without the track assistant, but these cars are
- 14:54completely, they've changed so much with all the anti lock breakings,
- 15:00the track assist and stuff.
- 15:02With the technology of these cars these days, it's, it's
- 15:05got a world of difference.
- 15:07So Randy, I got to ask you, because in reading the book, one of the things that
- 15:10remained unclear, I mean, the adventures that transpired in the book are amazing.
- 15:15And as it bounced between what was going on behind the scenes and
- 15:18what was going on track, what I was left wondering was, where did your
- 15:22driving ability and style come from?
- 15:24Did it come from growing up on the back roads of Southern Virginia?
- 15:28Or did you have coaching over the years?
- 15:30Cause it seemed to me like you just got there and you sent it
- 15:33every time there was a race.
- 15:35No, I didn't drive in Virginia.
- 15:37I built little push go karts when I was a kid.
- 15:40These are go karts without motors.
- 15:43We didn't have the motors.
- 15:44So we just put skates on plywood and push each other around and stuff.
- 15:50So, uh, my family's from a little town called Danville.
- 15:53No Danville.
- 15:54Well, I was born in Lynchburg.
- 15:56Oh, well, there you go.
- 15:57So where I was going with this is growing up as a kid.
- 16:00Did you ever have an opportunity to visit Virginia international raceway?
- 16:03Yeah.
- 16:04VR?
- 16:04No, I did visit a track called Summit Raceway.
- 16:08Summit Point.
- 16:09Summit Point.
- 16:10That's in my backyard.
- 16:12I went there to drive some Formula Fords.
- 16:16But I was just curious growing up in Southwest Virginia like that because
- 16:19for a long time VIR was kind of like the best kept secret in motorsports.
- 16:23You know, Paul Newman called it the paradise on earth and I was just
- 16:26curious if you ever had a chance to to race or if you'd ever be
- 16:29interested in driving that track.
- 16:31I would love to drive that track.
- 16:33I haven't never driven it.
- 16:34Oh, the only track in Virginia I drove was, uh, Summit Point.
- 16:37And Summit Point is actually in West, by God, Virginia.
- 16:40Oh, it's in West Virginia.
- 16:41Okay.
- 16:41It was just barely 1980 when I went to that track.
- 16:45So were you racing with Tom Cruise and Paul Newman at that time?
- 16:48I was just starting out with SCCA racing and Paul Newman was driving in SCCA.
- 16:55Very cool.
- 16:56But I think the driving came from early on.
- 17:00I had gotten a little three, five, six Porsche and did some
- 17:03SCCA events here in Florida.
- 17:06But my biggest thing came back.
- 17:08I went to road Atlanta in 1979 or I met doc Bundy.
- 17:14And he was a coach at Road Atlanta.
- 17:17I was there for one day and I ended up spending a day with
- 17:21him going around Road Atlanta.
- 17:23Then I went back the next day and spent a day on a skid pad.
- 17:28And the skid pad was really helpful.
- 17:31Learning car control, we would put oil and water on it and
- 17:35just go out and do different.
- 17:37kind of circles and keeping that wheel on the circles, inside wheel, outside
- 17:41wheel until you can learn to shift gears while you're doing these three sixties.
- 17:47And so I think that helped along with Doc Bundy, uh, giving me some tips.
- 17:51So basically a lot of seat time.
- 17:54So it's funny, you're the second person to mention Doc Bundy on the show.
- 17:57And so I've got to ask you this question back when you were racing, especially
- 18:00in IMSA, there's lots of folks that were coming up through the ranks, crossing
- 18:04between series like K& M and Trans Am and IMSA and so other, and otherwise
- 18:09in bad sport, they talked about your rivalry between Blue Thunder and
- 18:13Porsche with Derek Bell and all that.
- 18:15But there's another Floridian driver that was about the same time you were around.
- 18:19And that's Lynn St.
- 18:20James.
- 18:21And she also mentioned Doc Bundy on the episode we did with her.
- 18:23So I'm wondering, did you cross paths with Lynn?
- 18:26Did you guys race together back then?
- 18:28We didn't race together.
- 18:29I, I got to know Lynn.
- 18:31We was friends in EMSA.
- 18:33She was doing some racing with Ford and stuff.
- 18:36So got to know Lynn and she was quite good.
- 18:40It was amazing how fast she was and just a quality person.
- 18:44So enjoyed her company at the races and her and Debra Greg
- 18:48too was quite fun to chat with.
- 18:51So who are some of your rivals outside of Derrick Bell and the Porsche team?
- 18:55Did you have any?
- 18:56Yeah, I looked at every team as a potential rival, but with John
- 19:02Paul junior and John Paul senior junior was fast and senior was too,
- 19:07but junior was just smoother and.
- 19:09Just a great, great guy to be around on a racetrack.
- 19:13I trusted him.
- 19:14Of course, Al Holbert was super fast along with Derek Bell, but then we also had
- 19:19Klaus Ludwig, he was like a gunslinger.
- 19:22He was just fast and anything he got in Klaus Ludwig was just super fast.
- 19:27And Ford did a good thing when they hired him for the probe car.
- 19:31Because, uh, they searched for the best driver they could locate, and
- 19:35they came up with Klaus Lugwig.
- 19:37Bob Wallach was another one.
- 19:39He was super fast, and he was, uh, cantankerous to me sometimes.
- 19:44We kinda didn't see eye to eye when I first met him.
- 19:47Driving with, uh, on a BB512 Ferrari at Daytona, he thought I took the
- 19:51car off the course, and I didn't.
- 19:53The gearbox let go, and I happened to be the one in the car when it let go.
- 19:56But there was a lot of good drivers in IMSA and one of
- 20:00my favorite cars was the 935.
- 20:02That car was just such raw horsepower, no car assist like they do with these days.
- 20:09So you really, you just, you drove the shit out of it.
- 20:13That car had a reputation of being impossible to control.
- 20:16Yeah, it was badass and that's one of my favorite cars to drive.
- 20:20You know, it's funny.
- 20:21The people that you're talking about.
- 20:23I mean, you're really talking about the heyday of sports car
- 20:27racing and some of the best names were coming up during that time.
- 20:29We talked about Lynn.
- 20:30You talked about John Paul's junior and senior and others.
- 20:33And it's just, I mean, the list goes on.
- 20:36Let's not leave out, uh, Han Stuck and Hurley Haywood and Willie was just and
- 20:42he's still out there doing it to this day.
- 20:44I love the series that he's in another question that
- 20:47comes up as a result of this.
- 20:49And it's sort of a big question mark in the book too.
- 20:51And it wasn't really even covered in bad sport is.
- 20:54What happened to Blue Thunder?
- 20:56And for those that don't know what Blue Thunder is, that's the March Chevy GTP car
- 21:01that you guys campaigned back in the days of the prototype IMSA series and whatnot.
- 21:05Were they sold?
- 21:07Were they seized?
- 21:08Are they in a private collection somewhere in a museum where people
- 21:11can actually see Blue Thunder?
- 21:12Where, where are they now?
- 21:14I unfortunately know too much about this.
- 21:16When Randy and I became friends, I tracked these cars down.
- 21:20And I know who owns them.
- 21:23I know whether they've been for sale.
- 21:24They are private.
- 21:25They are in existence.
- 21:27What were the numbers?
- 21:2856 and 57.
- 21:29Yep.
- 21:30They may be available.
- 21:32If anybody wants to get in touch with me, I will happily take a finder's fee.
- 21:36I suggested to Randy that we should try to somehow mount an effort to get them.
- 21:42But there are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of
- 21:45dollars and they are out there.
- 21:48So to answer your question, the cars got seized along with the IndyCars that I had.
- 21:54They had seized a warehouse where I had a collection of my
- 21:57cars here in Fort Lauderdale.
- 21:59The cars got auctioned off.
- 22:01U.
- 22:01S.
- 22:02Marshals or the FBI auctioned off the cars and private owners ended up
- 22:06buying them for little of nothing.
- 22:08And all the spare parts, right?
- 22:09I love that part in the book where you're like, I didn't just
- 22:11buy, I bought 10 of everything.
- 22:13Yeah, I'd buy 10 motors and hundreds of thousands of gears and whatever
- 22:19body parts we need, we had extras.
- 22:22But all that stuff got seized in a seizure of a warehouse that
- 22:25I had all my car collection in.
- 22:27There's a rumor out there that Randy used to fly weed into Road Atlanta.
- 22:32And Randy, you tell the story, but from what I understand, that never happened.
- 22:37I don't think you ever used airplanes, but he did fly motors and
- 22:41cars into the backstretch at Road Atlanta, if I remember correctly.
- 22:46The road Atlanta was it.
- 22:47There's a lot of rumors that Bill and Don and I used to do plane
- 22:52loads and stuff, but I know nothing about that as far as that I did
- 22:57buy the track from Bill in 1985.
- 23:02He was being under investigation and we knew he was getting indicted.
- 23:07And Bill and Dawn Whittington owned the track at the time.
- 23:11And we found a way for them to get up underneath the track.
- 23:14So they didn't get seized.
- 23:15And I kind of became a silent partner with a couple of other gentlemen who was my
- 23:20front people involved to track and ended up losing that once I got a life sentence,
- 23:27the track kind of went another way.
- 23:29That's now by NASCAR, right?
- 23:31Now it's owned by NASCAR.
- 23:32The only good thing that come out of that deal was my brother was a
- 23:35manager for about 30 years to all the owners that went through the track.
- 23:41Even for NASCAR, he worked for there until he passed away
- 23:44a few years ago with cancer.
- 23:46And it's funny you guys bring up Road Atlanta because for me, it didn't
- 23:50sort of all come together until last year when I was at the Petit Le Mans.
- 23:53And I've been to Road Atlanta before.
- 23:55It was because I parked At linear raceway and walked over to the track.
- 24:00And I was like, that's can't be a coincidence, right?
- 24:04It actually, I think it is it's linear County or something.
- 24:09No, I don't have nothing to do with the track next door.
- 24:12I always thought, well, I'd buy that property.
- 24:14When I bought road Atlanta, it was 750 acres.
- 24:17I purchased along with the race track.
- 24:19And I always wanted to get the land next door too, but didn't get around to doing
- 24:23it, ended up going to prison before.
- 24:27So Randy, I'm curious, where were you working?
- 24:29What were you doing when you got out?
- 24:31So when I got out, my good friend, Preston Hinn, who's a, another race
- 24:35car driver who had quite success in the IMSA series, Daytona and a lot of races
- 24:41that they won with AJ Ford, Bob Wallach, that was some of his drivers, you know.
- 24:46Uh, nine 35s and nine 62s.
- 24:50He gave me an opportunity.
- 24:51He owns what they call the swap shop here in Fort Lauderdale.
- 24:55And it's a big flea market with a huge mall in the middle
- 24:59of this 88 acre property.
- 25:02So when I first got out, I went there and I was helping
- 25:05with the tickets for parking.
- 25:07Did that for several months until he made me a manager and
- 25:11worked there for about a year.
- 25:13And then after that, I became an Uber driver and drove
- 25:16Uber for close to two years.
- 25:19That had to be exciting.
- 25:21I always thought these Uber passengers have no idea who's driving them around.
- 25:27With the Uber driving done, then I started getting some opportunities to instruct
- 25:33with a company here called PDG Performance Driving Group in a Corvette school.
- 25:38So I started driving Corvettes and instructing.
- 25:41Private lessons and instructions, uh, at Homestead, Daytona, and Seabury.
- 25:46Instructed for PDG for a couple of years and did a couple of
- 25:51SCCA races here in Florida and a Mazda RX7, four races with that.
- 25:57After a couple of years of that, I got a job in a substance abuse
- 26:02treatment center, teaching instructions of how to meditate and do yoga.
- 26:08And it's amazing how.
- 26:10Things can come about with what we put out there.
- 26:13We get back.
- 26:14I got a job teaching meditation at sunrise on the beach.
- 26:18Amazing that I got this job getting paid to watch the sunrise come up
- 26:23teaching a lot of Afghanistan veterans.
- 26:27How to meditate and do yoga.
- 26:29These are people that are coming back from the Afghanistan war.
- 26:32And I had been to Iraq previously and was dealing with some social
- 26:37issues with substance abuse.
- 26:38And so it was like a great time for me because mentoring a lot of these
- 26:43men that had went through a lot of.
- 26:46hardships and struggles into Afghanistan and Iraq.
- 26:50I found myself at the beach being a mentor to these men and women.
- 26:54And that helped me a lot to coming out from 27 years of
- 26:58maximum security penitentiary.
- 27:00I did that for close to five years.
- 27:03Something that I've been interested in and you know, following you on
- 27:06instagram and that sort of thing is where did you learn how to paint?
- 27:09In the joint, I picked up the paintbrush.
- 27:12I was a big runner running about 50 to 75 miles every week, and I ended up
- 27:18losing all my cartilage in my right hip.
- 27:22And it took me about seven years to get a hip replacement.
- 27:26And it got to a point to where I could only walk about five or ten minutes
- 27:30and I couldn't walk any further.
- 27:31I had to stop.
- 27:32So I decided to go to the art room and take up oil painting.
- 27:38That way I could just get a seat with a canvas in front of
- 27:41me and I wouldn't have to walk.
- 27:42I could just sit down and paint.
- 27:44So I went to the art room and started painting and picked it up in
- 27:49the joint, just self taught in the art room in, uh, Coleman, Florida.
- 27:54Now I'm, I love art.
- 27:56It was, uh, you know, and I use that as an example.
- 27:59No matter the struggles, hardships, no matter what it is in, there's something
- 28:05positive that you can get out of it.
- 28:07And 27 years in maximum security prisons really developed me a lot of
- 28:13understanding about compassion because my last nine years, I Was a suicide
- 28:18volunteer for people who tried to commit suicide and I would sit with them for
- 28:22four hours a day when I read the book, the thing that struck me the most and
- 28:27I texted you about this was how hard that had to have been to sit with those
- 28:33guys and how much prison staff was grateful that somebody with experience.
- 28:38And being in the joint, how valuable that was for them to have you there.
- 28:43And it moved me beyond words, tears.
- 28:47I mean, you tell a harrowing story that I'm not going to get into that had to have
- 28:52been one of the hardest things that you've ever done, and you're doing it in a place
- 28:56where you're resentful that you're there.
- 28:59But you're making the most of it.
- 29:00Is that a work behind you that you did, or is that someone else?
- 29:03No, this isn't something that I done behind me.
- 29:06Um, that is a piece of artwork from Eugene Gerwin, which is a Russian immigrant.
- 29:12That piece right there, I purchased in 1984.
- 29:17It's a piece with a tugboat.
- 29:19You can't see it, but there's a tugboat going underneath the Golden Gate Bridge.
- 29:23The year I bought this painting, I had just brought a large load
- 29:27into San Francisco underneath the Golden Gate Bridge with a tugboat.
- 29:35I found that painting in an art gallery in Carmel, California.
- 29:39I love the stuff that you do, that's for sure.
- 29:43So another sort of where are they now question, in Bad Sport, several
- 29:47scenes where they interview Pam, she's quoted as saying, he asked me to marry
- 29:51him but I'm still thinking about it.
- 29:53So what about the relationship between you and him?
- 29:55So we just got married last November on the beach.
- 29:58Oh, congratulations.
- 30:00Yeah, so we're coming up on our one year anniversary.
- 30:03Very nice.
- 30:04Last November 7th we got married on Fort Lauderdale Beach.
- 30:07The kids, Brandy and your son, do they race?
- 30:10Are they at all interested in cars?
- 30:11No, my daughter lives in Colorado.
- 30:14She just got married last year.
- 30:16She married a cultivator, operational manager of a cultivation in Colorado.
- 30:22The company has one dispensary.
- 30:24It's in Aspen, Colorado.
- 30:26They just recently bought some property up near Telluride.
- 30:30My son here lives in Fort Lauderdale and he doesn't race,
- 30:34but here's the crazy part.
- 30:36Right before I was getting indicted, Pam was pregnant with twins.
- 30:40And we lost one of the twins premature death.
- 30:43And my son was born without his brother, but I come out in 2014 and his
- 30:49girlfriend gets pregnant right after I come out of prison and she has twins.
- 30:54So now I'm a grandpa of two twin.
- 30:58They'll be seven year old, October the 13th.
- 31:01I come out in October the 15th of 2014.
- 31:05And these boys are born October of 2015.
- 31:10Pretty amazing.
- 31:11Now that day I will put in go karts.
- 31:14Absolutely.
- 31:17Randy, when they went to your parents houses and they said, what
- 31:21do you have here that was Randy's?
- 31:22And your mom's like, no, just this old grandfather's car.
- 31:25Then they open it and it's full of money.
- 31:27Do I get that right?
- 31:28Well, it was my aunt.
- 31:30They went to my aunt's house in Virginia, and they said they were investigating
- 31:35me, their nephew, if I left any money or anything over there in storage.
- 31:41And they said, well, the only thing he brought over here was
- 31:43some antiques in the garage.
- 31:45So they said, why don't we look at them?
- 31:47So they go in there and They started looking in the antique furniture,
- 31:52the couches, the clocks and stuff and started finding money that my dad
- 31:58had hidden for me in the antiques.
- 32:00And the story of your parents and your family members getting in
- 32:04trouble is the most poignant thing.
- 32:06You didn't ever intend to hurt anybody else.
- 32:09So they also show you reuniting with Charles Podesta.
- 32:12Do you still hang out with him or any of the old crew?
- 32:15What about Alan?
- 32:16Alan was here at the house yesterday.
- 32:18We had dinner.
- 32:19He was supposed to make it over for the football game,
- 32:21but we had dinner last night.
- 32:23So I, I still see Alan regularly.
- 32:24He's my buddy from my childhood.
- 32:27We go way back.
- 32:28We're still friends.
- 32:29Chuck, I don't see him.
- 32:31I've texted and emailed him, but we had dinner after I'd gotten out of prison.
- 32:35And that was right along the time I was making a Netflix show.
- 32:38Alan came to mid Ohio.
- 32:41Back when I put Randy behind the wheel and a couple other good old friends.
- 32:45I forgot.
- 32:46Yeah.
- 32:47And it was so great to meet him.
- 32:49And then it's been so great to see him in the Netflix show and to
- 32:53be friends with him on Facebook.
- 32:54And he is a character, every bit of what you see on that Netflix
- 33:00show, where he defies convention and defies Randy's peace, love,
- 33:06let's all get along kind of message.
- 33:09Is Alan and Alan is just the greatest, very, very funny.
- 33:15When I see this stuff, I wish that I'd been there.
- 33:18Like, I don't want to get in trouble with these guys back in the
- 33:21eighties, but I wish that I'd been there and I wish that I knew them.
- 33:25The fact that marijuana became legal makes this all seem so ridiculous.
- 33:31The work that they had to put into supplying a plant to
- 33:34people who wanted to plant.
- 33:36I get it.
- 33:37It's more profitable if it's against the law, but the people who did it
- 33:41were colorful and they weren't violent and guys like Alan just restore your
- 33:47faith in humanity like he and a big giant Doberman guarding a safe house
- 33:54seems like one of the more interesting things that you could possibly like.
- 33:59It's quite amazing that the war on drugs is still going on.
- 34:03We still have tens of thousands of people incarcerated for this plant.
- 34:08What's amazing is I was involved three years before I got out,
- 34:12I got involved with a nonprofit organization called Freedom Grow.
- 34:16And they was helping support me and giving me letters of encouragement and hope
- 34:22that, you know, maybe I will get out.
- 34:24Having people in your corner means a lot to you when you're incarcerated.
- 34:28Now I find myself as vice president of this non profit and we help all the non
- 34:33violent prisoners of cannabis prisoners and do a lot of things with them.
- 34:38Freedom Grows sends them commissary funding.
- 34:41We send them birthday gifts every birthday with their mothers or their fathers.
- 34:45And we do books and magazine subscriptions.
- 34:48So it's a wonderful thing to be able to give back to the people
- 34:51that are still incarcerated.
- 34:52Since then, I've Been able to release a documentary show called
- 34:58Need for Weed on bad sports.
- 35:00Dropped a book on August the 2nd called Survival of the Fastest, which by the way,
- 35:04I, I just sold for a full feature film.
- 35:07So was blessed.
- 35:09Right.
- 35:09Yeah.
- 35:10That's just like amazing how Things come about.
- 35:13So ink that deal a few months ago.
- 35:16So the book will become a full feature film.
- 35:19So tell me something though, in the casting, is it going
- 35:22to be one of the Wahlbergs?
- 35:24Because I tell you what, looking at that photo of you from back in the day
- 35:27on the cover of the book, I could see Marky Mark playing you in the movie.
- 35:31What do we think?
- 35:32Yeah, we haven't got that far.
- 35:34We just, the studio just hired a screenplay writer.
- 35:37Pretty big deal with that because they did that within about four
- 35:40months of doing the negotiations.
- 35:43We're on board with that.
- 35:45We're getting the screenplay written right now, but something that really is bigger
- 35:49than that is last March, March 28th, to be exact, the state of New Jersey awarded me
- 35:55a cultivation license to grow marijuana.
- 35:58And it's huge.
- 36:00It's a cultivation license that allows me to cultivate
- 36:0475, 000 square feet of canopy.
- 36:07If I realized my full footprint, about 40, 000 pounds a year.
- 36:12And this is something that they refer to as reciprocative justice.
- 36:16Someone who did too much time for a plant deserves a shot at one of these licenses.
- 36:23They awarded me what's called a social equity.
- 36:26Cultivation license.
- 36:28They award that to people that's been impacted by the war on drugs.
- 36:31I happened to fit that criteria.
- 36:33I applied for the license about a year and a half ago and received it in March.
- 36:39And I'm in the process now of trying to bring on investors and with all
- 36:45that, the complexities that that requires, it's a huge lift for me
- 36:50because To do this is super expensive.
- 36:54So since you're building this farm, cultivating license, all this kind of
- 36:58stuff, are you going to grow Punta Roja?
- 37:01Your number one, your favorite as it's outlined in the book?
- 37:07Yes, I will bring us several strains to the market.
- 37:11That's going to be pretty unique.
- 37:13I already been talking about the strains that we're going to bring and
- 37:16it's not going to be hard to market.
- 37:18It's so amazing that the government locks you up.
- 37:21And I spent 27 years in maximum security penitentiaries.
- 37:24And then they come out, they say, well, we're sorry, but here's a license.
- 37:28You can grow it now.
- 37:29You want it's bizarre.
- 37:32This is the easiest marketing campaign that you could possibly ever envision.
- 37:37The guy who brought, well, what he was convicted of bringing in 300, 000
- 37:42pounds of Colombian weed can market.
- 37:45Whatever he's growing with the stamp of authority.
- 37:50It's like the Queens weed.
- 37:51And there better be a race car on the logo.
- 37:57I'm bringing a strain called octane cannabis.
- 38:00Better be a blue thunder in there too, right?
- 38:02I got a blue thunder.
- 38:03I'm trying to unveil blue thunder in Las Vegas at the MJ biz.
- 38:08This November, a brand called blue thunder.
- 38:11I'm getting it done.
- 38:13I just got a resolution passed in the town of Eatontown, New Jersey.
- 38:17And that's huge right there to have a resolution passed to be the one
- 38:23of two cultivators in this township.
- 38:25And this is kind of local to my area.
- 38:27So I'm doing whatever I can to help Randy.
- 38:30Find the realtors, the professionals and the lawyers and the folks who he
- 38:33needs up this way to get this done.
- 38:37There's something else that I wondered about.
- 38:39You said you lost Road Atlanta when you got put away.
- 38:42The cars got taken away, sold at auction, just your whole
- 38:46life sort of just disappeared, melted away into the darkness.
- 38:49You see it more now than maybe years ago, but a lot of sports.
- 38:53Organizations and sanctioning bodies.
- 38:56When something like this happens, people are stripped of their titles.
- 39:00Do your records, do your wins and your championships still stand or
- 39:04were they taken away from you as well?
- 39:05Oh, they still stand.
- 39:07Um, I would just recently went last my first Indianapolis 500.
- 39:11I went back to a legends day.
- 39:13It was such a blast.
- 39:15Got to sign all day autographs on Legends Day.
- 39:19They still have the Rookie of the Year trophy in the museum.
- 39:23So all the records still stands and we didn't have nothing to do
- 39:27other than financing the race cars.
- 39:30We talked about 2015 timeframe, getting back behind the wheel of a
- 39:34car, doing some work for some driving organizations and coaching here.
- 39:37You are seven years later, 68 years old.
- 39:40Are you still racing, planning to race?
- 39:43Are you still behind the wheel of a car?
- 39:45I haven't been racing COVID kind of put a, I was instructing regularly getting booked
- 39:50quite COVID came about in 2020 that kind of put a damper on the racetracks here.
- 39:57They close that down there, they're back open.
- 39:59But I did just get invited to road and track magazine.
- 40:02Just invited me to a rally in the Hudson Valley.
- 40:06It's a three day event with 25 invited cars.
- 40:09And we drive from upstate New York to Lomrock, Connecticut, where we'll do hot
- 40:14laps on October the 18th, 19th and 20th.
- 40:18I have no affiliation with this event, but it is a very, very fancy, beautiful
- 40:22event with great hotels and great rides.
- 40:26Yeah, a great conclusion at Lime Rock.
- 40:29And I do have an affiliation with Extreme Experience, which does similar
- 40:34sort of stuff, driving supercars on public roads, which must be the most
- 40:40frustrating experience in the world, unless you're okay with getting arrested
- 40:43and paying fines and being very rich.
- 40:45And the road and track event sounds like a fantastic event.
- 40:49Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.
- 40:51What if things had turned out differently and you'd ended up winning the 500?
- 40:56What was your plan?
- 40:58What were you going to do next?
- 40:59My whole deal that I wanted to do was win the Indianapolis 500.
- 41:04I went there, was rookie of the year, finished 10th.
- 41:07And then on my following next oval, I just knew.
- 41:11That I was going back to win Indy 500.
- 41:13I was at Michigan 500.
- 41:15I cut a tire and ended up hitting the wall.
- 41:17And that kind of ended the deal for me because I got
- 41:21indicted several months later.
- 41:22That where you broke your leg?
- 41:24Yeah.
- 41:24That's where I had a compound fracture to the right femur bone.
- 41:28Mario had crashed and I picked up some debris from his crash.
- 41:31Had I won the Indy 500 later on, I would probably went back to get a second win.
- 41:39So I have a feeling that you would have kept at it until you won it sort of deal.
- 41:43You know, a lot of us, we have those goals and then when we reach the goal, you're
- 41:46standing at the summit of the mountain and you go, well, now what do I do?
- 41:49Right.
- 41:49Do you go for a formula one?
- 41:51Do you go into touring car?
- 41:53I guess maybe you weren't thinking that far ahead, right?
- 41:55I had my eyes set on Pikes Peak.
- 41:58I had already started doing some planning for Pikes Peak.
- 42:02Didn't get to fulfill that.
- 42:03Got cut short with that.
- 42:05So my career in racing was really short.
- 42:08I accomplished everything I did in a short time, but there was some Pikes Peak that
- 42:12I did want to do and wanted to race Indy.
- 42:16Of all the tracks that you ran during your seasons, were there some that
- 42:19you loved and some that you hated?
- 42:21There was none that I hated, but there was some tracks that I liked a little
- 42:25bit more than others really loved Laguna Seca was good at Laguna Seca.
- 42:30Love Watkins Glen, a fast track when I was driving there, they had just
- 42:35reopened it from being shut down in 1984.
- 42:39I won that seat in the last race of the year.
- 42:42There was no slow turns at Watkins Glen.
- 42:45To me, it was like, wow, this track is balls out because
- 42:50there's really no slow turns.
- 42:51And that's where I saw him.
- 42:53That's where I came to know who Randy Lanier was.
- 42:561984 at Watkins Glen.
- 42:58Love that track.
- 42:59So bucket list events or tracks that you'd still like to drive or go to?
- 43:04Any track.
- 43:07You know, I still love going to watching races.
- 43:10I go to Sebring and Daytona.
- 43:12Occasionally make it down to Homestead.
- 43:15There's a new track in New Jersey that I haven't been to.
- 43:18I'd like to go drive.
- 43:19I've heard about, and I think there's one in Kentucky that
- 43:22I'm hearing good things about.
- 43:24NCM.
- 43:25National Corvette Museum.
- 43:27Yeah.
- 43:28It's a lot of work to do this stuff and to do it on a budget.
- 43:32I don't wish that I was selling 15 million worth of weed a year to do this.
- 43:38But on the other hand, I kind of wish I was because 15 million worth of
- 43:42weed would buy me a lot of track time.
- 43:47Yeah.
- 43:47Unlimited.
- 43:50I think that it would be fun to hear Randy's story all the way to
- 43:55the bottom and I read the book.
- 43:58Randy has been incredibly open with stories when you're sitting
- 44:02at the bar after the race.
- 44:03You know, he did his time.
- 44:05He deserves to be able to tell his story without fear of anything
- 44:09else coming back to haunt him.
- 44:11And the stories are unbelievable.
- 44:14Mike, and I really sincere when I tell you in any struggles or
- 44:19hardships that we all go through, if you really look for it, you'll
- 44:23find some positivity, some positive.
- 44:26Stuff in it.
- 44:27And that comes about with my mother used to tell me that greatest
- 44:32form of knowledge is empathy.
- 44:34And I come to understand that now.
- 44:36I didn't understand that when I was growing up, but I understand it now.
- 44:40And the lowest form of knowledge is opinions.
- 44:46Everybody's got an opinion.
- 44:47You don't have to have a back to back it up.
- 44:49They got at least two, like they got two elbows.
- 44:55I know that the cars have changed in 30 plus years, you know, from when you
- 44:59were racing to now, but the advice you could give aspiring drivers, you know,
- 45:05people that are coming up through the ranks that are in SCCA and NASA and
- 45:09other organizations that want to go pro.
- 45:11What are some of the lessons you learned on that part of your journey
- 45:14that you could pass on to them and say, Hey, this is what you gotta do.
- 45:18Do all the hand eye coordinations you can do.
- 45:21I used to play racquetball a lot.
- 45:23That was my sport.
- 45:24I loved it so much that I built a racquetball court at my house in Colorado.
- 45:29If you want to become a really good race car driver, you live, eat,
- 45:32sleep, drink, talk, and love it every day because then you become that.
- 45:39And from my perspective, there's kind of a parallel the brutality that goes
- 45:43along with with motor sports, right?
- 45:45You know, the violence that takes place in the car, the pressures
- 45:49that your body undergoes.
- 45:51And a lot of people who haven't done that just don't undergoes.
- 45:56In of itself, it's an art, and I imagine when you sit in front of a canvas and you
- 46:01have a plan, much like you have a plan in your head about how you're going to attack
- 46:05this next corner, or make a pass, whatever the case may be, it's kind of a similar
- 46:11thought process in terms of how do I make this brutality into art, or how do I make
- 46:16this blank slate into some form of art.
- 46:18You know, how it's like art, too, is Developing the skills to really
- 46:25put your focus on the task at hand really means a lot because the higher
- 46:32the focus you can take, the higher concentration you can have, the better
- 46:37off you are with your lap times.
- 46:38So you see the people that are constantly running up front
- 46:41are constantly qualifying good.
- 46:43They have.
- 46:44His skills to concentrate at a high level with the art, no matter where you are, if
- 46:50you're really focusing and concentrating on the art on what you're putting on the
- 46:54canvas, you can be anywhere in a prison cell or south of France at the moment,
- 46:59you're in this canvas, and it's an amazing thing that it can take you away from.
- 47:04All other things.
- 47:05That sort of leads me to an overarching thought that I've had ever since I met
- 47:11you seven years ago, whatever it was.
- 47:14You've got this massive drug dealing operation and you've got
- 47:19this massive racing operation.
- 47:22Reading the book gave me insight.
- 47:24I don't have the ability to fathom how you've got millions of dollars worth of
- 47:31drugs out there on the sea or on the land and people who are moving it for you.
- 47:36And whether you trust people and whether you know people well enough to understand
- 47:42that they're not going to sell you out.
- 47:45And now you've got this race in front of you, and you're going to go drive, and
- 47:50your focus has to be on this, and then as soon as you're done, it has to be on that.
- 47:55And I have the most immense amount of respect.
- 47:58It seems like it would require someone to, being on the spectrum,
- 48:03you know, in order to divert the two.
- 48:05I don't know how you did it, and I would love to understand.
- 48:08He's like a drummer.
- 48:09He just splits his brain, right?
- 48:11He's doing.
- 48:12Yeah, it boils down to where we put our energy and where we put
- 48:17our attention, our energy follows.
- 48:19It's so if you really develop the skills and I say skills of
- 48:23driving race cars to me, but he says, Oh, you got talent and stuff.
- 48:27But look, You've got to develop it.
- 48:29You've got to sit there, get your seat time, but it also having the
- 48:33capability and the capacity to really focus, really concentrate.
- 48:38Meditation is an awesome thing.
- 48:40It is an amazing tool that we have.
- 48:44And we all have many gifts within us.
- 48:46When I say that, I say it sincerely.
- 48:48We have gifts that is amazing.
- 48:50Just for example, we all have the gift to be able to be the
- 48:54observer of our own thoughts.
- 48:58But a lot of times we can go through our day and never once step back
- 49:02and be the observer of what it is that we are thinking or feeling.
- 49:06We're on autopilot.
- 49:07It's really easy to be on autopilot when you're working 8 to 4, 8
- 49:11to 5 or whatever you're doing.
- 49:13So going through your day, And developing the skills to live a mindful life to
- 49:19really be aware, take a few moments several times during the day and
- 49:24step back and be the observer, be the witness of what it is you're thinking
- 49:30what you're feeling, because that will help you develop the skills of
- 49:34mindfulness so when you're in a car.
- 49:37And you're really battling it out and figuring out how to get around
- 49:41someone or the place to make a pass.
- 49:44You'll do it with ease and not so much forcing it to happen.
- 49:49So art does that, really focusing on what it is that you want
- 49:53to develop this piece into.
- 49:55I feel like I need to take up painting to make my driving better now.
- 50:01When I became friends with Randy and offered him this drive, I didn't know
- 50:07what I was going to get out of it.
- 50:09I didn't really have a whole lot of motivation to get anything out of it.
- 50:13I just said, all right, you know, guy seems like he needs
- 50:15to get behind the wheel.
- 50:17Yay.
- 50:18The stuff that he's talking about has educated me so much.
- 50:22Like I'm so grateful for his experience.
- 50:25That sort of mindfulness has sunk in and I'm.
- 50:30Looking at the source and I'm looking at his experience.
- 50:32I read his book, you know, but we spent hours talking and
- 50:36I'm so grateful for all that.
- 50:37It's just been a wonderful relationship.
- 50:40And Mike, I want to tell you, I'm so glad that you mentioned gratitude,
- 50:45gratefulness, because I want to tell you, and this is for real, living
- 50:49a life of gratitude is an amazing thing because you get away from
- 50:55living a life of lacking, and it brings about abundance in all areas.
- 51:00It's amazing what the gratitude, what you just mentioned, does for you.
- 51:05Because it does away with sense of lacking and it brings about abundance.
- 51:09So thank you.
- 51:10Poignant stuff.
- 51:10And you know, the parallels sounds as much like a recipe for becoming
- 51:15a a world class driver as much as it is a recipe for a life well lived.
- 51:20The parallels that I see.
- 51:22Particularly at the amateur levels, you're talking about gratitude.
- 51:25I can't tell you the number of times that fellow competitors cars have broken,
- 51:30or they've had an issue or something like that, where another team has
- 51:34jumped in to get them back on track.
- 51:37And I think that's something that really makes the racing community very special.
- 51:44For someone like yourself, who's competed at the highest levels to
- 51:48give back, I'm very grateful for your sharing your stories and your wisdom.
- 51:52Oh, thank you.
- 51:53I enjoyed it.
- 51:54The stories are fucking awesome.
- 51:58Tell us how you really feel.
- 52:01So what's next in the Mike and Randy chapter of the book,
- 52:04where are you guys off to next?
- 52:06What's your next big race together?
- 52:07We're getting old.
- 52:08I have cataract surgery coming up when I can see, I'll let you know.
- 52:14That's a handy bit of information to have.
- 52:17Yeah, no, but it's, it's actually great because you guys are sitting here talking
- 52:22again as friends, you develop this relationship over almost a decade now,
- 52:26and you can see that you guys have been doing other stuff behind the scenes and
- 52:29not just all about race cars and whatnot.
- 52:32Even though as Randy said, we need to eat, sleep, drink, breathe race cars all the
- 52:36time, if that's what we're into, but it's good to see this friendship has blossomed
- 52:40out of something as simple as that.
- 52:42Original letter that you sent Randy.
- 52:44So that's that's pretty amazing.
- 52:45Well, we we went through some stuff I'll let Randy decide whether or not
- 52:49to tell you but life throws stuff at you all the time and When he was early
- 52:55out of prison and I was down there visiting him And it was a different time.
- 52:59It was a different life.
- 53:00A lot of stuff has passed over the dam he and I have Maintain this
- 53:06wonderful relationship where we talk, I don't know what once a week,
- 53:09once every couple of weeks, and we're trying to do some business
- 53:13with the marijuana business up here.
- 53:14And I'm glad that he looks to me as a trusted resource.
- 53:19I think that it's wonderful to watch this movie and the book and the
- 53:24Netflix show, like all take off.
- 53:27I just couldn't be happier.
- 53:28Randy and Mike, any shout outs, promotions, or anything else you'd like
- 53:32to share that we haven't covered thus far.
- 53:34Mike, I'm coming up to the New Jersey on the 12th.
- 53:39I'm a speaker at the Edison, New Jersey convention center.
- 53:43It's a investor cannabis.
- 53:45convention.
- 53:46Try to make a point to hook up with you.
- 53:49Good.
- 53:50Well, I can't end without just saying Rally Baby for Life, the
- 53:54race team that brought him back on track, not selling anything.
- 53:58Right on.
- 53:59I have a non profit called freedomgrow.
- 54:01org.
- 54:02We support cannabis prisoners, non violent.
- 54:04We have 178 of them.
- 54:06If you haven't heard of us, check us out freedom, go.
- 54:09org.
- 54:10None of us take a salary.
- 54:12We do it all through volunteer efforts on our own time.
- 54:16And we support these nonviolent cannabis prisoners and their families.
- 54:20We do holiday gifting.
- 54:22I'll give you an example.
- 54:23Last holiday was Easter that we had to funds.
- 54:26We do it all through donations.
- 54:28We made up 126 Easter baskets and we put little water bottles.
- 54:33That's it.
- 54:33These are for the children, the 188 cannabis prisoners had 126 children.
- 54:39So we made 126 Easter baskets and we put little water bottles that said, you are
- 54:44strong, you are brave, and you are smart.
- 54:46We put little Rubik's cubes.
- 54:48We put activity books.
- 54:50We put all the candy and the Easter bunnies and the chocolates, and
- 54:54we send them to the 126 children.
- 54:56We do that all through donations.
- 54:59So please check us out, freedomgrow.
- 55:01org.
- 55:01After 27 years of being in prison, Randy Lemire returned to the
- 55:05world of motorsports and weed.
- 55:08And after that fateful weekend in 2015, Mike Carr got in touch with
- 55:12Randy to let him know that he had edited Randy's Wikipedia page.
- 55:16Now there's no longer the word Before race car driver and to quote
- 55:20Randy, that feels really good.
- 55:23To learn more about Randy and his story, be sure to check out the August
- 55:2622 release of the bestselling book, survival of the Fastest Available
- 55:31on Amazon, in print and on Audible.
- 55:33And if you don't have time to read.
- 55:35Then watch the Netflix documentary series, Bad Sport, specifically
- 55:38episode two entitled The Need for Weed, which brings you up to speed
- 55:43on Randy's story in his own words.
- 55:45And if you want to follow Randy, be sure to check out www.
- 55:49freedomgrow.
- 55:50org or follow him on social at Randy Lanier 27 on Instagram and at Randy
- 55:56Lanier on Facebook and LinkedIn.
- 55:59And in the spirit of gratitude, I sincerely say I can't thank you enough
- 56:03for coming on our show and talking about what's happened over the last
- 56:08seven, almost eight years that you've been out, all the things that have
- 56:11transpired and relating information back to drivers as to, you know,
- 56:16where we can take ourselves next.
- 56:18Thank you.
- 56:18It's been a good ride here with you guys and I appreciate you.
- 56:21Very grateful for having me on your show.
- 56:24Yeah.
- 56:24Thank you so much.
- 56:25This was really fun.
- 56:26Yeah.
- 56:27Thanks for including me here.
- 56:28Thank you.
- 56:29It was enjoyable.
- 56:30Michael, always a pleasure.
- 56:32Indeed.
- 56:33And Tom, nice to meet you.
- 56:34Nice to meet you too, Randy.
- 56:35And hopefully you'll drive one of my cars one day.
- 56:38Right on.
- 56:39I'm like, hit me up.
- 56:41Soft pedal that offer his cars have horsepower.
- 56:45Unlike mine, his Mustang had 550 horsepower and it was so much
- 56:51fun to just drive around people.
- 56:53Oh, damn man.
- 56:54I, the car I'm building now is a 1992 Corvette.
- 56:58Oh, nice, sweet.
- 57:01Sweet.
- 57:02It'll be a good time.
- 57:03I should have that ready for the first part of the year next year.
- 57:05Well, hit me up if you haven't got a seat available.
- 57:08Oh, that's hammered and stone now.
- 57:11I think there's always a seat available for Randy.
- 57:14You're just going to kiss somebody else.
- 57:16All right, guys.
- 57:18Thanks, Randy.
- 57:18Thank you all.
- 57:19Thank you so much.
- 57:20This was fun.
- 57:21Thank you, Mike.
- 57:22All right.
- 57:23Take care.
- 57:28If you like what you've heard and want to learn more about GTM,
- 57:30be sure to check us out on www.
- 57:34gtmotorsports.
- 57:34org.
- 57:35You can also find us on Instagram Also, if you want to get involved or have
- 57:40suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at 202 630 1770 or send
- 57:48us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.
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- 57:51We'd love to hear from you.
- 57:52Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here.
- 57:55We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted
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