One of the great drag racing team owners has passed on to the great strip in the sky. Paul Candies, one half of the legendary Candies and Hughes team that still persists to this day has left this mortal coil. Candies was one of the greatest minds in the history of the sport and saw the business of drag racing differently than all others before him. It was the 1970 GatorNationals that saw this point proven when two Candies and Hughes team funny cars met in the final round. This was a feat not replicated until Don Schumacher and John Force ushered in the current age of NHRA super teams that dominate competition. Candies saw this coming decades before anyone else. Proudly we can report that Paul Candies’ cackle car was the last one running at the 2013 NHRA National Hot Rod Reunion in Bowling Green just last month. We were told before hand that Candies car was set up with a big enough fuel tank to run for half a week if necessary to claim the honor (no trophy or direct recognition given) of being the last car running. To us, this stands as proof that Candies was as hardcore a racer as they come. No one was going to beat him…even at a damned Cacklefest. That rules.

The Candies and Hughes name can still be found on Drag Pack Mopars and even Ford Cobra Jet Mustangsas P.B. Candies is upholding the family name in the NHRA and IHRA drag racing world as a Stock and Super Stock racer. Through the 1980s the Candies and Hughes names was synonymous with top fuel and funny car entries in the major sanctioning bodies of the day with drivers like Richard Tharp, Mark Oswald, Leroy Goldstein, Leonard Hughes, and a host of others.

Candies operated the company names after his father Otto Candies LLC which was an off shore service and supply operation that operated more than 100 vessels that serviced the offshore oil and gas industry all around the world.

Breaking from the formal line of this remembrance, the fact that Candie’ car ran minutes….and we mean minutes longer than the next closest entry in the Cacklefest at Bowling Green was 100% bad ass. That thing was about ready to melt itself into a puddle, but cackle it did! We’ve heard that a heart attack claimed Candies, which is a shame. As we’ve said of others, he’ll be missed by many. Paul Candies was a drag racing champion, hero, and visionary. He stands alone in his era of seeing the direction of the sport.