Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman by Matt Stone and Preston Lerner is the latest in a very strong line of releases from Motorbooks. This book chronicles Newman’s career as a hard running race car driver complete with great sidebars from the people he ran with and against, and has a foreward by Mario Andretti.
Many people know that Newman was into cars, but few realize that he was a multi-time SCCA national champion. He drove dirt track cars, and in one well documented sidebar story in the book, a Winston Cup car. He had been offered a shot at driving the car, owned by Richard Childress, during a test day. NASCAR approved the test and Mike Helton asked that the crew guys pull some timing out of the motor and set the spoilers to keep the car glued to the track and not in lap record form. They did neither. Newman hauled around the track and matched the lap times of several hard running professional drivers.
That was the charm of this man, both on the track and off, as shown in the book. He was at home at the track with other racers. He fit in. He was not unapproachable but he was not easy to approach. That was not by his own design but more from others’ simply being in awe of the guy.
Newman drove sports cars, made pulls at Bonneville, raced on dirt, and even raced a Modified on the road course at Daytona International Speedway. He was also a successful open wheel team owner.
Newman began racing later in life, and once he did, completely immersed himself in it. While making films he would regularly seek out local tracks and scout a local racer who would allow him to make some laps in his ride. The stories are great.
When Paul Newman died it became quickly evident that he was one of the few people in the world that no one had a bad thing to say about. His work helping kids and donating to charities was something he took great and quiet pride in. Those accomplishments are in many ways more important than his racing resume, and this book does a great job talking about both.
Two thumbs way up on this one. You’ll love the cars and become even more impressed with the man. The book is available from Motorbooks, and your local bookseller.
