In 1986, everyone knew Randy Lanier was fast. He’d just won a sportscar championship and shattered an Andretti record to become the Indy 500 rookie of the year. What most people didn’t know is he paid for his racing dreams by smuggling massive quantities of marijuana past the feds.
By 1988, Lanier was a fugitive in the Caribbean, running from the government and from responsibility for his role in a $300 million drug smuggling operation. Before long he would be caught and sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.
At the height of the Reagan-era War on Drugs, federal prosecutors charged Lanier and his associates with shipping … More
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There are at least 15 people in United States federal prisons serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for nonviolent, marijuana-related offenses. Until quite recently, Randy Lanier was among them.
On Wednesday morning, Lanier, a former pro racecar driver and pot smuggler, was set free in Coleman, Florida. In 1987, he was accused of smuggling a million pounds of marijuana into the US over the course of seven years, and a year later was sentenced to spend the rest of his days behind bars. But on September 15 … More
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The Lotus Formula One Team is a big operation. Based in Oxfordshire, UK, it employs over 400 people.
The annual budget for competing in the 19 races on the F1 calendar is around $200 million (£130 million) to put 2 cars on the track.
But, their chief executive Matthew Carter tells me that this is much less than what the top teams are spending.
Lotus F1 is currently owned by Genii capital, a Luxembourg-based venture capital group. They brought in Carter to look at the team’s operation from more of a business than an F1 perspective … More
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Mark Webber is the only driver in the FIA World Endurance Championship LMP1 class that has driven a Formula One car in competition at Circuit of the Americas. He drove for Red Bull Racing as a teammate to Sebastian Vettel and compared the differences between the Porsche LMP1 car and his Red Bull car he drove in 2012 and 2013.
Webber compares LMP1 to F1 cars at COTA
“LMP1’s just a bit heavier … I need to be a little bit more patient with the car, [the] F1 car’s obviously … More
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