When Chuck Weyant died at age 94, he was the oldest living driver to have competed in the Indianapolis 500. But his racing career was about more than just longevity.
Born in St Mary’s, Ohio, on April 3, 1923, Weyant was immersed in racing from a young age.
“My dad always had race cars,” reminisced Weyant. “There were always four or five guys around working on them. I loved hanging out there. My bedtime in those days was whenever I fell asleep in the seat of a race car.”
Weyant began driving race cars when he bought his own at the age of 18. He spotted a midget sitting on a used car lot that he passed daily while traveling to and from his job at a shoe factory.
He couldn’t get his mind off of it and pestered the owner relentlessly until he agreed to sell it for $300, payable at $5 per week. Ecstatic, Weyant spent every spare moment preparing it, but only got to race the car a handful of times before World War II began.
While other guys carried photos of their wives or girlfriends through the war, Weyant carried a photo of his little red race car. When things got tough, for motivation, he’d pull it out to look at or show to his buddies.
“I bet I had that photo out a thousand times,” chuckled Weyant, “reminding myself, and describing to the guys what I was going to do when I got back home.”
After the war, Weyant returned to racing. He spawned a midget career that saw him inducted into the Midget Racing Hall of Fame in 2003, with numerous track championships and 64 feature wins, including the prestigious Hut Hundred in 1955.
That success in the midgets opened the door for a ride on the Championship Trail and at Indianapolis.
“I dreamed about driving at Indianapolis from the time I was a kid,” recalled Weyant. “I got my first ride there in 1954. It wasn’t a great one, but I jumped at the chance.”
He breezed through the rookie test but didn’t make the show in the old car. He returned in 1955 and made the cut in dramatic fashion.
“Back then the turns were paved, but the frontstretch was still brick,” explained Weyant. “When you came across those bricks, the front wheels looked like two basketballs dribbling up and down.
“On my first qualifying run, I was running real good, then I spun coming out of four and the car whipped around over those rough bricks. When I stopped spinning, I was pointed straight down the race track. So I dove into the pits. They changed the tires and I went back out and made the race.”
Weyant started 25th and had a solid run to finish 12th.
For 1956, he had a ride lined up in the well-regarded Frank Curtis roadster. But driving Curtis’ sprint car, he flipped and broke his arm during an April race in Reading, Pa.
In those days if you didn’t race, you didn’t eat. Especially anxious to get back to racing after missing Indy, five weeks after he broke his arm, Weyant showed up at Reading in the Curtis sprint car. He fabricated a guard out of a beer can to protect his cast and was leading when halfway through the event his arm began to hurt and he faded to ninth.
“I had tears in my eyes afterward it hurt so bad,” confessed Weyant.
He returned to Indianapolis in 1957 in the Federal Engineering Special and finished 14th. Weyant competed in the 500 for two more years while still running the midgets and Championship Cars full time.
He never managed the Indy victory he longed for but remained satisfied with what he had accomplished.
“Here you are a little old midget driver and you get to race in the Indianapolis 500 … unbelievable,” Weyant said.
Weyant backed down on his racing activities after his last 500 start but continued to compete in midgets on a limited basis into the early 1970s. Like many, he found it difficult to “hang up the helmet.” But he said, “Eventually, the desire to get back out there diminishes when you realize how bad you can get hurt in those things.
“I have no regrets,” Weyant insisted before his death in 2017. “I would do it all over again, no questions asked.”
Weyant lived long enough to proudly see his racing passion carried on with his nephew, current USAC midget owner Keith Kunz.
This story appeared in the Dec. 28 edition of the SPEED SPORT Insider.
