RFM Front Page News

LAGUNA SECA, California (October 19, 2006) — Although James Weaver has driven for Dyson Racing for 20 years, he is perhaps the least frequently interviewed of the Dyson drivers. That is because, in his words, “It’s not my name on the trucks” and therefore he sees no reason to put himself forward. Nevertheless, when one does get a chance to speak with Weaver, he is an interesting fellow with both memories and forthright opinions to share. “My first race at Mosport,” he recalled, “was in 1995 with Andy Wallace in the old Riley & Scott, and we won the race too. That was a race where Gianpiero Moretti was penalized for acting like an Italian – which he richly deserved – but it was very exciting racing! Mosport has always been my favourite track since then.” No doubt he has many more stories to tell from his 20 years with Dyson Racing (which have, I’m told, been conducted on a handshake contract). “I am,” Weaver mused, “the third or fourth senior person with the Dyson team, after all.” For a driver to stay with a single team for that many years, especially in these days, and to stay modestly in the background the whole time, is most unusual, but Weaver maintained that for him it was not such a surprising thing.

“I like working with this team,” he said simply. “I feel at home here, I won’t say comfortable because that’s like I’m sitting back with my feet up. But I feel that because I’ve been with the team so long, what I have to say is listened to and taken into account. They may say it’s rubbish, but they don’t say that before they hear what I have to say!” Others have a higher opinion of James’ acumen, saying that his seat-of-the-pants assessment is more reliable than the detailed analysis of some more learned team members.

In all those 20 years, which was his favourite drive? “The GTP,” he said without hesitation. “Those were powerful cars! And the Can-Am cars were great too. After all, today’s cars have 600 horsepower in qualifying – those had 1,000! They were brutally fast cars in those days. Now they just keep trying to slow the cars down and it’s not as much fun as it used to be, for the fans or for the drivers.”

When asked if the continual effort to slow the cars down was due to a concern for safety, Weaver shook his head. “The cars are very safe now,” he said. “The work that has been done has been on the tracks, putting in great big gravel traps and runoffs – I mean, it’s not like when you’re in a rally car, where you have a cliff face on one side and a yawning gorge on the other! There’s actually more risk going through the corners now as they have been tightened up; but on the modern race track we are at less risk than the average housewife is in her own home. Think of all the things that can trip you up, or smother you, or explode, or fall on you in your home! None of those things are going to happen to you on a race track, are they? Racing is like mountaineering. If you keep making the mountains lower and lower, pretty soon you are mountaineering on the level, and that's not mountaineering at all -- that's walking!”

Although Weaver likes the natural road courses best, he enjoyed the new street course at Houston where he and co-driver Butch Leitzinger put their car on pole and he ran the fastest lap. “We had a good crowd there,” he said, “who really liked the racing, and the track was good and fast. Yes, it was bumpy, a typical street course, but if you’re a racing driver you either learn to miss the bumps, or you take the car into the pits and say ‘sort this car out please!’ and if after that you go into the wall, that is not the fault of the track – that’s your fault. It’s useless to blame the track when it’s you driving the car and you’re supposed to know what you are doing.”

He was also happy to code-share the racing, both at Houston and in the other venues planned for 2007, with various open wheeled series, suggesting that those who claimed such events risked putting the ALMS in a support-series position ‘need to get out more.’ “After all,” he said, “it’s not much different from a promoter scheduling two hit bands instead of one; those who come to the concert for one band may hate the other one, but at least they got to see one band they liked. And for the rest of them, they might have got to hear a band they wouldn’t have heard before, and they could say ‘well, I like that and I’ll have to check out what else they have done.’ We may pick up some new fans and will certainly get more attention from the casual fan who comes to see what it’s all about; they’ll walk through the paddock and look over the cars and they’re bound to go away with something to think about. Some of them may say ‘well that was all right’ and be more receptive to the series in the future.”

Because he’s driven in touring cars in the past, I asked if he’d thought about driving in Speed World Challenge. “I’m too busy these days,” he said. “I drove in the old Firehawk Series in the 1980s and I liked that, but I have a lot of work to do with this team that keeps me too busy to branch out.” Weaver very much enjoys working on development of the car; he’s the first one there and the last to leave, and he likes working on challenging issues. Although he said that everyone chips in their ideas when it comes to development, he agreed that he had a lot of input. “I have the experience,” he pointed out, “and I can figure out the questions more quickly – I don’t know anything about the computer, I’m a complete plank about that, but after all, a computer is just like the encyclopedia. If you want to find out something, you don’t go and read the encyclopedia from the beginning; once you know the question, you can go right to the section of the encyclopedia where the answer is. I am just good at defining that question.”

As for the prospects at Laguna Seca this weekend, Weaver was confident that the No. 16 car, the only one Dyson is entering due to serious damage the No. 20 suffered at Mosport, is quite fast enough on this track to win. “The only question we have is the fuel situation between us and Audi. But I have confidence that we’ll do well tomorrow and we’ll just have to see how it goes.”

When Weaver takes to the track on Saturday afternoon, you can expect that seeing how it goes will be the understatement of the weekend. James Weaver will be out there making sure the No. 16 Dyson Racing Lola B06/10 AER is going just as fast and as sure-footed as it is possible for it to go, and he’ll be out there doing it not for the glory of James Weaver, but for the glory of Dyson Racing. He is a good example for modern drivers of the proper balance between self and team.