STORIES OF DRIVERS RUNNING POT ENDURE
1980s racers who funded own rides drew suspicion
“I did have some money from sponsors. The (team) wasn’t totally from running the grass. But it mostly was.” Randy Lanier, who was 10th at the 1986 Indianapolis 500 but later served 27 years in prison for a drug-running conviction
Don Whittington has the distinction of being among the only trio of brothers to qualify for the same Indianapolis 500.
That was in 1982. Some 35 years later, Whittington, 71, runs an airplane-leasing business in Fort Lauderdale. He chats easily about his current life, including having been approached to make a movie based on the brothers’ lives. And what a story it would be. Because Don Whittington has another distinction. He was one of four Indy 500 drivers, including his brother, Bill, who were convicted within months of each other in connection with trafficking marijuana. It’s a circumstance that still stirs curiosity among longtime race fans.
So, of course, with Whittington on the phone, the question had to be asked: “How did you manage to operate at the highest levels of both auto racing and marijuana smuggling?”
“That’s a B.S. deal, and a lot of it’s not true,” Whittington snapped back. “And if you’re going to talk about that, don’t ever call me again.” Click. Dial tone. So, those who remain curious might have to wait for that movie, at least to hear Whittington’s take on what unfolded in Indy-car racing from March to October 1986 — a series of events that seems right out of an episode of Miami
Vice, a 1980s hit TV show that dramatized South Florida’s crime fighting and drug smuggling and popularized that scene’s tanned, fast-cars, loafers-without-socks style.
During that time, Don and Bill Whittington, as well as Randy Lanier and John Paul Jr., were busted in connection with marijuana trafficking in three separate smuggling operations, two of them multimillion-dollar schemes that funded, or partially funded, high-end racing teams.
Don and Bill Whittington were mainstays in the Indy 500 field from 1980 to 1985, mostly in cars they owned. A third brother, Dale, raced at Indy in 1982. The Whittingtons had top-shelf English-built race cars but not much in the way of corporate sponsors.
Lanier had success racing International Motor Sports Association-level sports cars with his own mostly self-financed racing team. He arrived at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1986 with his own team and the same chassis and engine package as the great A.J. Foyt. Lanier’s cars had hardly any sponsorship, save for a modest-sized one promoting the card game Uno.
“There was talk within the racing ranks (about the Whittingtons and Lanier), because, the report was they were actually buying race cars with cash,” vet- eran racing broadcaster Paul Page said.
A new race car at the time cost about $1 million. Race teams typically turn to corporations to help pay expenses. Sponsors receive, in return, public exposure with their corporate logos plastered on the race car. A race car is, among other things, a billboard on wheels.
And so race car drivers are, among other things, corporate pitchmen. They go out of their way for publicity. No one did this better than Danny Sullivan, the 1985 Indy 500 winner. Sullivan gave sports writers good quotes. He hired a Hollywood publicist, was on People magazine’s most beautiful list and had a video arcade game bearing his name. He made a cameo on Miami Vice.
The Whittingtons and Lanier, who resided in South Florida, by contrast did not seek attention.
“They were not great interviews,” Page said. “They didn’t mount a PR effort because they didn’t have to. They didn’t need sponsors.”
“I don’t recall the Whittingtons having stickers on the cars other than ‘Whittington Brothers,’ ” said Bill York, who managed the track’s media center. “Everybody at the Speedway knew how they derived their money.” Or thought they knew. “A guy can show up in Gasoline Alley with $45,000 in cash in an attache case wanting to buy a motor,” said Robin Miller, an auto racing journalist who at the time wrote for The Indianapolis Star, “but you didn’t know they were drug dealers. There was an assumption, but nobody ever could prove it. Nobody in racing ever brought it up.”
For the 1985 race, Don Whittington was the Indy 500’s sixthfastest qualifier, behind two-time winner Emerson Fittipaldi and ahead of four-time winner Al Unser Sr. Bill qualified on the outside of Row 4. It was the last time the Whittingtons raced at IMS.
Ten months later, in March 1986, Don and Bill Whittington pleaded guilty in connection with a multiton, multimillion-dollar, Colombiato-South Florida marijuana smuggling ring. Bill admitted to heading the organization, which the Drug Enforcement Agency said took in some $73 million. Don helped invest the profits in legitimate businesses.
Later that year, Lanier, the 1986 Indy 500 rookie of the year, was busted and later found guilty of heading a different marijuana smuggling ring, one that imported 600,000 pounds of marijuana into the USA from South America. Lanier’s assets, when seized by the DEA, came to about $150 million.
Also that year, a fourth Indycar driver, Paul, whose daring last-lap pass of venerable Rick Mears to win the 1983 Michigan 500 still is talked about, pleaded guilty to a marijuana-related racketeering charge unrelated to the Whittington or Lanier schemes.
The racing industry fretted about its image. Mario Andretti complained to The Indianapolis
Star that “a couple rotten apples” had been “messing with my livelihood.” “I resent it, tremendously,” he added.
The Speedway’s strategy was to lay low. “It was a bad situation in a major sport, and we figured the less said about it, the better,” York said. “The consensus was the news would die a slow death.”
It’s impossible to say what effect the marijuana smuggling had on the Indy 500, but there was no obvious suffering. The year after the busts, the race’s television ratings, which had declined steadily in the previous three years, rose substantially.
Today, the four drivers are free men — even Lanier, whose lifewithout-parole sentence was by far the most severe. Lanier was released from prison after 27 years. Bill Whittington’s was the second-longest sentence, 15 years; he served four.
The only one to return to the Speedway as a driver was Paul, who, after serving 21⁄ years in 2 prison drove in six more Indy 500s. His best finish was seventh in 1998. Paul, 57, lives in California and is in poor health, suffering from Huntington’s dis- ease, a progressive, inherited neurological disease.
The Whittingtons returned to the Speedway in 2011 to sign autographs alongside other veteran drivers as part of the track’s centennial celebration.
“Bill was quiet, as he always was,” said Donald Davidson, the Speedway’s historian. “And Don was outgoing, almost charismatic, as he always was.”
Bill Whittington, 67, did not respond to recent interview requests, but Lanier did.
Lanier was released from prison in October 2014. Exactly how that happened is unclear, given his life-without-parole sentence. The details are sealed by the court, and Lanier declined to discuss them. Other than that, he was talkative. His voice is high, friendly and Southern-sounding. He was born in Virginia. He lives in Davie, Fla., near Fort Lauderdale, with his wife and near his son and twin 18-month-old grandsons. He is 62.
He works as a health technician at a substance-abuse treatment center, taking patients’ blood pressure and handing out medication. He paints, mostly landscapes but also abstracts. He does yoga and tai chi, disciplines he learned while in prison. He recently drove a Mazda RX-7 to second place in an amateur sports car race in West Palm Beach.
He talked candidly about how he paid for his racing career.
“I did have some money from sponsors. The (team) wasn’t totally from running the grass. But it mostly was,” he said.
He comes across as delighted. “The grandiose life has all faded away,” Lanier said. “But I’m good with whatever. I’m just happy to have my freedom. I’m enjoying whatever moments I have each and every day. I feel really blessed.
“The world is as you see it, and if you can understand that, you can understand a lot in life.”
The last time Lanier was at IMS was in May 1986 when he made such a splash. He finished 10th, ahead of Foyt, Unser and Andretti.
He’d like to return to Indy, but not this year. His probation prohibits him from traveling farther than 165 miles from his home, unless it’s job- or family-related.