OAKS
Kyle Weiss is busy Friday nights during the summers with his family's Italian ice and ice cream business, Burnie's.
Located in Wayne Township, however, the business is close enough that the tug of a race car's roar is undeniable.
"Where Burnie's is, if the wind's right, I can almost hear the cars when I'm outside," Weiss said, noting the weekly program at Big Diamond Speedway in Forestville.
It is a track where Weiss had accumulated some of his 33 feature victories in 24 years and where he once owned track championships in both the roadrunner and street stock divisions.
However, now that he is driving a 358 modified, Weiss finds himself competing principally on Saturday nights at Grandview Speedway in Berks County, even though there is another track just a few miles away.
"Family comes first for me and I've got to take care of business," Weiss, a father of three, said during the recent Motorsports 2014 show at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center. "It's our livelihood."
It's also the reason he can afford to race on Saturdays. The 2014 season will be his 18th in a 358 modified, and he's coming off a seventh-place finish in points at Grandview.
"Somebody put me in a car," Weiss, who turns 40 on Feb. 16, recalled about his start in the division in 1997. "About halfway through the year, he (the car owner) quit and we bought the car, and I've been in a modified ever since."
The reasons are simple for Weiss, whose first win in the division came in the prestigious Georgie Stevenson Memorial at Big Diamond.
"The competition, it's very stiff. The quality of drivers, a lot of respect. A lot of great people I've met over the years, and I've had no regrets," he said.
At Motorsports 2014, Weiss displayed a car with a different look than his 2013 ride, but he said the Teo Pro chassis actually is the same.
"It's a car from last year that we rebuilt," he said. "We put a new body on it, and we got a lot of great sponsors from Schuylkill County."
Those helpers include MAS Trucking, whose investment in racing is more than just as a sponsor.
Weiss has set aside his Wednesday nights to compete for car owner Dennis Seigfried in a SpeedSTR, an open-wheel car, at Action Track USA in Kutztown.
"He said, 'I'm going to buy a car. Will you drive it?' " Weiss said. "I said, 'If you buy a car, I'll drive it.' He bought a car and we're going to run the full schedule this year."
Weiss took his first turn in that type of car last year. Twice, he placed among the top 10 in the features, but only after he rolled his SpeedSTR in his first attempt.
"I took out a little too much real estate than I should have," Weiss said. "It was my own fault. We paid for it. It was bad. We were on a rental deal, so I had to pay for it, but we ran the feature. We had a good time."
In addition, Weiss' deal with Seigfried includes the use of Weiss' second modified chassis as a sportsman to be used Chester County driver Katie McArdle.
Therefore, Weiss is perhaps more involved in racing than ever in 2014.
Yet the real work is in Wayne Township, where he can't get away from his business even on the nights he competes. After all, summer weekends are great for ice cream sales.
"I do that stuff at about 3 o'clock in the morning," he said about his work after returning from the speedway. "When we're not open, I make the ice. It's easier that way."