Two-time NASCAR Xfinity Series champion Randy LaJoie is one of the true characters of his generation, so it’s no surprise that his oldest son, Corey, is also quick-witted.
Here are two examples, proving the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
When SPEED SPORT recently asked Corey LaJoie how he would describe his job as the driver of the No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet in the NASCAR Cup Series to a racing neophyte, he quickly responded, “I’m a glorified Uber driver with no passengers.”
Then, there was this answer regarding the best advice his father has ever shared with him. “He always said, ‘Don’t hit shit.’ That was his favorite thing to say — and he’s not wrong,” Corey LaJoie said. “If you hit shit, your day’s not as good as the days when you don’t hit shit.”
While Corey LaJoie’s sense of humor and positive attitude are a breath of fresh air, the 31-year-old, third-generation racer is intensely focused on winning at NASCAR’s highest level.
“I still believe that my best achievements are ahead of me,” said LaJoie, who made his Cup Series debut in 2014 and has more than 200 series starts. “I’ve still got a lot of time behind the wheel of a Cup Series car, and I want to ultimately win a Cup race and compete for a championship.
“But I’ve got some cool memories. Winning my first late model race at Rockingham was cool. Winning that modified race at Martinsville last year was pretty cool,” LaJoie added. “I don’t have a whole lot of trophies to show for the good runs, but I’ve definitely got some trophies in my future.”
One of the trophies in LaJoie’s collection was earned in his first race.
“It was me versus one other kid; I was probably 5. I don’t know if my dad had the restrictor plate tune-up on my kart, but I lapped him like three times,” LaJoie recalled. “At the Charlotte track, there’s a road course for go-karts in the infield and they run a little rectangular track on the front straightway of that. It was probably a 10-lap race. I bugged dad for about three weeks where the trophy was, and he kept telling me it was in the mail. But I think he just went to the trophy place, got a trophy and gave it to me to shut me up. I’ve still got that trophy.”
Lajoie’s entire life has revolved around racing in some form or fashion.
“Some of my favorite memories growing up were in a motorhome, driving around the country — going to Gateway, going to Niagara Falls when we were up at Watkins Glen, Darlington, Rockingham,” he said. “I was probably 6, 7, 8 — something right around there — when we were riding around the country with dad.
“I always had a passion for racing growing up. It was always something my parents used to keep me between the rails. I think I was about 15 when I decided to give up baseball, which was also a love of mine, and go all-in on racing.
While working his way up the racing ladder, Corey LaJoie was also involved in the family business — The Joie of Seating, which manufacturers seats for all types of race cars.
“I was probably 12 and dad had our head welder teach me how to weld, and I picked it up fairly quick,” LaJoie recalled. “Dad let the guy go that he was paying 33 bucks an hour and had me start welding seats when I was good enough, to save some money on labor costs.
“No, I don’t touch a whole lot of seats anymore,” Corey LaJoie said about his current role in the business. “I try to make sure our Jonathan Davenports, Nick Hoffmans and the guys who have run our stuff on the dirt side for a long time are taken care of. Most of the time they have things pretty well under control, so I don’t need to be in there welding seats. My time is better served trying to make our Spire Motorsports cars go faster or hanging out with my kiddos.”
LaJoie and his wife, Kelly, have two young sons – Levi and Jenson.
“Having children causes you to realign your priorities and realize what matters beyond that result on Sunday afternoon,” LaJoie noted. “My kiddos are going to be excited for me to come home. They are going to cry and do all the things they normally would whether I won or finished 22nd. So it allows me to kind of unplug and then plug back in when I need to focus.”
Corey LaJoie is continuing a family tradition that started in 1953 with his grandfather, Don LaJoie, a star short-track racer who earned a spot in the New England Auto Racing Hall of Fame.
“I’m not going to encourage, but I don’t think I’ll discourage,” LaJoie responded when asked about his sons becoming fourth-generation racers. “We’ll see if they show some interest and start asking, but I’m definitely not going to push it on them because the cost to develop yourself to the point where you make money doing it is much more exponential of a cost than when I was growing up. It would be hard for dad to get them there for sure.”
Spire Motorsports’ shop, located behind Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C., has a championship past.
“I’m kind of a NASCAR history nerd, so I know a lot of Alan Kulwicki facts. Having the opportunity to race out of the shop they won a championship in is special,” LaJoie said. “I’ve known and worked alongside Paul Andrews before so it’s cool to hear some of the stories he has to share about the shop. We are just trying to keep the No. 7’s legacy strong and get that thing back in victory lane.”
Away from the race track, LaJoie uses his sense of humor to entertain NASCAR fans through the uniquely named Stacking Pennies podcast.
“I started seeing a sports psychologist when I got into the Cup Series about how to keep my confidence high and figure out goals — even though I was racing for a team at the time that wasn’t capable of winning races in the Cup Series — there were things I would set out to achieve over the course of a weekend and make myself better,” LaJoie explained. “Those were the pennies and we just tried to continue to add pennies, to learn and grow, whether it was pit-road speed, positive attitude on the radio, stuff that was unrelated to the speed of the car that I could control.
“We started adding all those in; if you hit your marks and do all the things, you earn a penny and you add it to the stack. Eventually, you have a dollar. It’s really and truly about doing the small details right and they will ultimately add up to be something substantial. When NASCAR wanted me to do a podcast, there wasn’t a question about what the name was going to be.”
Where does LaJoie see his racing career in five years?
“Hopefully, I’m still driving a Cup Series car and making a decent living,” he said. “Hopefully, our Kickball Klassic is still going strong. I have a lot of fun with that and it raises a lot of money for Christian charities. Hopefully, I’ve got a couple of wins in the column. If I’ve been doing it that long with no wins, I think I should probably look at doing something else. But if I can stick around for that long I’m going to end up in victory lane for sure, I guarantee you.”
This story appeared in the May 3, 2023 edition of the SPEED SPORT Insider.
