Pursuing a high-speed hobby
By Norm Oshrin
It never fails. Drivers and walkers invariably turn their heads as they pass 61 Harwood Road on an otherwise conservatively lined street in the Greenbriar at Whittingham community in Monroe Township.
Parked in the driveway is a yellow Chevrolet Corvette. It’s not there just for show. Nor is it just a family car for David and Elaine Weiner: Instead, it can be found, from time to time, with the helmeted David behind the wheel, on the auto-racing tracks at Watkins Glen, N.Y.; Pocono, Pa.; or Lime Rock, Conn.
Racing?
Well, not exactly. "That’s an exaggeration," says Mr. Weiner. "So yes and no."
"They’re high-speed driving events," he explains, conceding: "When people look at it, they think we’re racing, with multiple cars on the track at the same time."
Mr. Weiner, a 64-year-old retired international business consultant for Fortune 500 companies, doesn’t see anything unusual about all of this.
"It’s just a hobby," he says. "I don’t get a high out of it. It’s just something I do. It was a scary thing for Elaine — but not for me. It’s just something interesting. You have a car that can go fast and you want to see how you can drive it."
To Mr. Weiner, it’s a natural progression in life.
"My belief is, if you’re a red-blooded American male, somewhere along the way, it becomes a thing with cars," he says. "You look at cars, then drive cars, own cars and get performance cars to see what they can do.
"Ever since I was little kid, people called me a motorhead, a gearhead. Some people go to drag strips, others go and do road racing. I go to these high-speed driving events," Mr. Weiner said.
When he gets the yen — which he has for about 10 years, starting with a Ford-imported Merkur — Mr. Weiner sits by his trusty computer, clicks on the track he wants to visit and finds out what dates are open.
"They’re out to make money," he point out of the tracks. So, when they are not otherwise booked for scheduled formal racing events, they rent it out to clubs.
"I piggyback on some of them," says Mr. Weiner – who was planning to do it again Aug. 20 and 21 at Watkins Glen.
Mr. Weiner says he is not a particular fan of auto racing as practiced in the U.S., considering it "boring watching the cars going round and round." But, he says, "I am a European racing fan" (where the cars customarily race from city to city.)
At Watkins Glen, Pocono and Lime Rock, Mr. Weiner falls into what is termed the "advanced" category of high-speed drivers.
"You are taught how to drive at high speeds," he says — and, he adds, not in souped-up or modified cars — but rather in your every-day family car, yellow or not.
Mr. Weiner said he gets his 2003 Corvette, which has about 27,000 miles on it, up to speeds of 165 miles per hour. The key, he says, is "how fast you can make the turns.
"Nobody passes me," he boasts.
Mr. Weiner’s devotion to his high-speed hobby can be found both in his garage — where the square tiles are painted black, white and, naturally, yellow — and in a bookcase in his den, which holds books on racing and photos from car shows, together with sports memorabilia.
High-speed racing is not the only hobby for Mr. Weiner (pronounced "Winer"), who also pursues an admittedly more passive hobby: What else? Wine collecting. He has about 500 bottles, all of which are stored in three coolers around his home.
"A friend started us out on this, turned me on to it," he says. "First came dessert wines and then we started trying different wines and migrated to wines we like. We get most of them as part of a mailing list from major wineries."
While it wasn’t always the case, concedes Elaine, his wife of 43 years, today she is comfortable and relaxed about it all.
"When he started, I got nervous," she confides. " I said, no, I don’t want to watch, I didn’t want to watch."
Eventually, though, she did.
"He’s a good driver, a safe driver," she says, noting how "I went out once on the track in the passenger seat with an instructor to see what it was like."
She was satisfied.
"Hopefully, other drivers around him are as careful as he is," she says.
Mr. Weiner is not sure about how some of his neighbors might know about his high-speed hobby. But, he says, "when I tell them, they say ‘really? I want to do that, too.’"