PL has shut it down after his last lap. Aged 83, Paul Leonard Newman has passed away. You probably don’t know Paul Newman as PL, but those of us who go back a ways in motorsports knew him as PL, who happened to have an acting career as a sidelight.
He was exposed to racing while training for the movie Winning, where he played a race car driver. The movie sucked, but PL got the bug. He drove in his first competitive event in 1972 and was one of the usual suspects in the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) winning a few championships along the way.
PL raced rocket-sled Datsuns/Nissans in the Trans-Am series when the series was the Home of the Crazed. He wasn’t putting around as a back marker either, PL was known as a tough competitor who would use the chrome horn if needed.
PL also raced at LeMans in 1979 in a Barbour Porsche 935, as well as winning his class at the 1995 24 Hours of Daytona. When he won Daytona he was 70 years old.
He came back to shoe again at Daytona in 2005 at age 80 in a Crawford DP03 Ford Daytona Prototype. The car DNF’d but his fellow seat mates were Sebastien Bourdais and Cristiano de Matta for heaven’s sake. Interestingly enough, PL was diagnosed as colour-blind in those blue eyes when he tried to enlist as a pilot in WWII.
He founded Newman/Haas with Carl Haas. The team was a Champ Car threat every time they unloaded. PL even had a foray in (then) Winston Cup as an owner, eventually selling his piece to The Captain, Roger Penske which is now the #12.
There was still the acting and the political activism and the philanthropy and the salad dressing, but I think, deep in his heart, PL was a gear-head.
So, we can observe his passing by noting the movies, his Oscar as Fast Eddie Felson in The Colour Of Money in 1986. Or, being #19 on Nixon’s Enemies List, creating Newman’s Own to benefit the Hole in the Wall Gang Children’s Camp, or a wonderful quote of his regarding monogamy, which is “Why go out for hamburger when you have steak at home? These are all good things.
Or, we could find some old in-cockpit footage of PL smashing up and down the gears at Lime Rock in a wild-hair-up-the-ass Nissan Trans-Am car, winding it out as hard as he could, driving like he stole it.
I’m choosing B. Thanks PL.
RoadDave 