"You see, it was the Oscars." "People vote." "They say, "him," or, "her."" "Don't hand me any of that crap." "In this, it isn't, "we vote, and it's him and her."" "You either cross the finish line first, and it's either him or her." "How do people in show business regard his racing?" "I'm not sure they know he races." "Technically, I mean, he was really a good driver." "He wanted to be looked at as a driver," "Not as an academy award winner, but as a man who was involved with his heart and soul in racing." "He loved the big cars." "He loved the horsepower." "That was his thing." "He just wanted to go fast." "Racing became his passion, and he went for it." "Paul Newman is going to be the "C" production 1979 national champ." "The margin of victory... 6.3 seconds between first and second." "I was born in January of 1924." "My brother came along 1 year, 3 days, and 10 hours later." "We grew up in a suburb of Cleveland, shaker heights." "We were very close." "If somebody was picking on my brother, I'd be there." "And I can remember Paul stepping in on a couple of occasions or more." "Most of our friends had the use of cars before Paul and I did." "Dad never felt that that was an essential thing, even when we went to college, we were in the service, came back out of the service." "Did we have our own car?" "No." "And there is the checkered flag for 500 winner Mario Andretti." "I met Paul Newman in 1967." "It was Bridgehampton, Long Island..." "Can-Am race." "I was driving this car that was called "the honker,"" "and on race morning, there's a big "Paul Newman" on front of the car." "I saw Paul Newman is sponsoring." "All of a sudden, there's Paul Newman and Joanne, and I was totally starstruck." "Immediately, I invited him to go in the cockpit, and he was very taken with all the gadgets and everything." "And then I took him for a ride." "And Bridgehampton is one of those elevation tracks and narrow, blind corners." "And, I mean, it's really easy, sort of, to impress somebody quickly." "And I noticed that, you know, he was sort of white-knuckling." "I, quite honestly, think that captured his imagination." "In 1968, I was cast with Paul to do this film, "Winning."" "All I want from you is to come in first." "Both of us?" "They wanted to have us be able to drive on the tracks with cameras mounted on the cars so it looked like we were really involved." "He's in trouble." "He seems to be out of gas and heads for the pits." "And in order to do that, we both had to be race drivers." "We had to learn how to drive automobiles." "So we were sent to the Bob Bondurant School of Driving." "I'm Bob Bondurant here at Sears Point International Raceway and the Bondurant School." "Well, the studio called me and said they were gonna make this really good movie... racing movie." "So Paul and Robert came down to the school." "I said, "so, Paul, how come you wanted to do this movie?"" "He said, "I had two other movies" "I could make a lot more money on, but I always wanted to see if I could drive a race car."" "When he heard about the Bondurant school," "He was eager to jump into it." "You know, one of the greatest rewards about having my own driving school is being able to teach other people how to learn to drive better." "I think it was always inside him somewhere, you know?" "When he got involved in something, he really turned it over." "He really investigated it." "He looked at every aspect of it." "And every aspect, I think, that he looked at in the world of racing was something that attracted him." "And I took Paul with me and teach how to do an oval, taught him the line, and then he went a little quicker and quicker and quicker." "And he learned real well." "He listened really well." "He stayed out particularly late." "He kept going." "You know, I'd get out of the car and be happy to get out of the car, but Paul, he really loved it." "Got the look of eagles in his eyes." "I could see it." "I could see him starting." "And when he came out of that picture, that was a permanent lifetime passion of his, and it never diminished." ""Winning" was just completed when we did "Butch Cassidy."" "Listen, I don't mean to be a sore loser, but," "When it's done, if I'm dead, kill him." "Love to." "I first met him in a way that probably made indelible our friendship, or at least my devotion to him, because they were casting the film," ""Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."" "He was already cast." "He was a well-known name." "I was being approached to play Butch Cassidy." "The original title of the film was" ""the Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy"" "'cause Paul was gonna play Sundance." "The studio said no, I wasn't enough of a name." "It seemed to center on the fact of Paul's approval." "I had never met him, so we went to meet him." "And after that meeting, Paul just said, "I'll go with it." "I'll go with Redford."" "Well, that ought to do it." "In the course of making the film, we discovered that we had a lot in common, and we developed a friendship that was not unlike the two characters in the film." "I'll jump first." "No." " Then you jump first." " No, I said." "What's the matter with you?" "!" "I can't swim!" "Why, you crazy, the fall will probably kill ya." "Ohhhhhhh!" "Oh, shi-I-I-I-I-I-I-t!" "He would drive souped-up cars..." "Volkswagen all jacked up..." "But there were no racing cars involved." "I had racing cars because I'd been a lover of racing since I was about 15." "When Paul and I met, by that time," "I had acquired a very special racing car called a Porsche 904." "It was built for Sebring." "So that was the car I had when we made "Butch Cassidy."" "I knew of his love of cars" "And so forth, so I said, "you want to drive it?"" "He took it to hand right away, and it was pretty clear that he had a natural ability with the car." "When we saw each other again, he was racing." "He had gone to this school, graduated." "You started the whole thing, Bondurant," "Whether you know it or not." "I mean, I remember with some trepidation the first time I went from a two-liter Datsun sedan into a formula Vee." "And it was right out of the box, and no one had checked camber or anything, and the car just lurched from one side of the corner to the other, and I thought, "boy, if this is a racer," "I don't want to have an awful lot to do with it."" "He went on to the racing world." "That's what he really wanted to do." "You could tell that this was a big, big thing in his life." "The studios didn't want him doing that." "If something happened to him, it would involve a great financial problem." "He meant so much to a movie." "I mean, if you get Paul Newman to do a picture, I mean, that was hundreds of millions of dollars in profits for them." "And I dreamed about this game, fat man." "I dreamed about this game every night on the road." "I mean, they think of Paul." ""Geez, what is he doing in a racer." "Is he crazy?" "Let him do it for a couple of times, then we'll take him out of it."" "You know, that's their attitude." "In 1971, I was at Lime Rock on a Tuesday testing, and it was not unusual for Jim Haynes, who owned the track, to say, "would you take so and so from the Hartford courant, the Norwalk hour," "The Stamford advocate," one of the newspapers," ""around for a couple laps?"" "So I said, "sure." "Send him over."" "It was Paul, in blue jeans and sunglasses, and his son." "I didn't recognize him." "He didn't look like a plastic, Hollywood guy to me." "So I took them both around for a couple laps, and somebody said, "that was Paul Newman, wasn't it?"" "I said, "it was Paul something or other."" "Well, and there was a place called Bob Sharp Datsun." "So, that was sort of one of those legendary places." ""Bob Sharp?" You know, I'd go visit him." "I'd go, "my God, that's Bob Sharp."" "I'd watch it like the Beatles were performing there, and that's who he raced for." "He was 48 years old when he started racing, when most people are retiring." "Hi." "I'm Sam Posey." "I used to drive cars like this for a living." "It's been 17 years now since I started racing." "And, recently, I've tapered off a bit." "After all, racing's supposed to be a young man's game." "We met right here when he was first starting out." "He'd made the movie "Winning"" "and kind of fallen in love with racing." "I sort of made friends with him and tried to help him with his driving." "He was terrible at first." "At the beginning, I mean, he was not very successful at all." "You know, he wasn't too quick." "He was just taking it all in, easy, easy, easy, and practicing." "He knew how major the skills and knowledge that was necessary to drive those racing cars." "He was very sensitive that he wanted to learn the craft of racing cars." "He knew that it's very, very difficult with celebrities who are very professional." "They're used to being a winner, and in racing, how do you win the next month?" "You got to pay your dues." "But I said, "Paul, you will be a better driver if you race an underpowered car for a year or two." "You will learn to not scuff off speed." "If you screw up, you want to know, 'don't do that again.'"" "He sensibly got a Datsun 510, a small, boxy car." "And he wasn't racing Ferraris, and he wasn't racing 'm..." "He was racing Datsuns." "It was something the average guy could aspire to." "He didn't live at the top of the food chain with the cars." "He started at the middle or, as some would say, even lower level and earned the respect of the average guy." "He would come on Tuesdays when the track was open for practice." "So there'd be other cars on the track, but he would make a lot of laps." "You're always competing with yourself." "You're trying to bring a little extra to your performance." "The objective is just to get the car through each turn as fast as it can possibly go." "For some drivers, I think that's intuitive." "I kind of see that they're pantsing." "My own approach has just been to work up to the limit a step at a time." "He slowly just chipped away at it." "He would pound around at Lime Rock, just pound around, pound around, pound around, and just, he got better and better and better." "When I started out in racing," "I knew that the guys were saying, "oh, balloon foot out there."" "I said, "well, that's their problem," 'cause" "I'm a slow study, and I know it's gonna take me a long time." "But you can't quit simply because they're laughing at ya." "And one thing that you learn in acting is to go out there in order to do it right, you have to do it wrong." "And the same things is true in racing." "I crashed the car 'cause I was just too eager, that's all." "I knew, you know, that you've got to drive your own race." "Can't drive somebody else's." "So I got sucked into that and made a mistake." "Paul knew the importance of learning a skill just as the importance of learning the skill of acting." "He was not good when he started, and he admits that." "But as he worked and developed and worked and developed, he became a very good actor." "Now, you look here." "You've had 24 of my 34 years working for you on this ranch, and, daddy, you have had top-grade cheap labor." "But it took a while to realize that that was not his "A-One" passion." "It was really cars... racing." "So when he realized that, he went at it hammer and tongs." "I mean, he went at it fully." "Well, he approached it a bit like, in a way, in his acting." "We got a racehorse here, a thoroughbred." "You make him feel good." "I teach him how to run." "When he got a part, he really investigated the character and investigated where he was gonna go with it and the arc that he was gonna take." "You're talking about a guy who'd kill a grifter over a chunk of money wouldn't support him for two days." "He obviously used some of that in approaching the racing." "At one point, he said to me, "you know," "I'm acting out the role of a racing driver."" "That's the lovely part about being an actor is that you get to assume a lot of different personalities." "And a lot of those personality traits stick." "I look at that, and I say, "gee, there's a little bit of Hud in there or fast Eddie Felson."" "Acting is an enormously disciplined thing to do in terms of work, of preparation, and Paul is extreme about preparation for any film, whether he's acting or directing." "And I think all of that kind of preparation lends itself to the work that you have to do as a racer, that you can't just leap into the car and start driving." "Paul and Joanne could walk from our motor home, two blocks to the false grid with movie people with a motorized bottom taking 200 hundred pictures, and I think he was oblivious to that." "He had an ability to not let those kinds of things upset him, and I think the movie concentration helped his racing concentration." "Really be able to know that you can discard all the extraneous stimuli and depend on the one focus that you want to focus on." "And when you really accomplish it," "I think you just feel really good about it." "For about 24 years, I had a place in Connecticut," "Westport, just about a mile from where he was." "And it was then that he was racing up Lime Rock." "He'd been with Sharp." "So he said, "why don't you come up?"" "So I went up there and got on the track." "I whipped around about five or six times." "But he jumps in and zips around in about half the time that I did." "When I saw that, that's when I first saw Paul race, and I said: "Whoa, he's really good."" "I think you pick up 300 rpm from where I look at it." "He became so boring, because that's all he'd talk about." "I'd go to talk to him." "I'd say, "so, how you doing?"" ""Well, let me tell you about the car..."" "It started to drive me crazy." "The runoffs would be all the factory teams competing against each other." "Paul was driving Tullius' Triumph" "Against Jim Fitzgerald in the "D" production category at the 1976 SCCA runoffs at Road Atlanta." "Fitzy ended up breaking the car, giving Paul his first SCCA National Championship." "But I think Paul wanted the thrill of beating a guy, not winning a race artificially." "Paul would love to have been a football quarterback." "Did Paul look 6'4, 200 pounds with muscles?" "Was he really 5'9"-1/2 and 155 pounds?" "And if you have some of those ingredients of spacial relations, a burn in your belly to want to win, and the discipline to pull it off, you've got an advantage over the football player." "I always wanted to be a jock." "I skied and boxed and played football badly." "I had no physical grace." "The only thing that I ever found any grace in was an automobile." "He was always searching to be better..." "A better person, a better actor, better driver." "That was just his nature." "That's where I think the ego and the competitor came into him." "I can't be competitive as an actor." "One guy is playing Uncle Willy." "The other guy is playing Hamlet." "So how do you say which performance is best?" "In a car, it's very simple." "It's down to a thousandth of a second." "Anyone that's a racing winner has an ego to want to be a winner, and so did Paul." "Paul has a saying I'm sure you've heard, where he says:" ""Winning isn't everything." "It's just all there is."" "I don't know who the quote is from, but it certainly applies to him." "Actors have the same stigma that rich guys have." "You know, "here comes so and so with his trailer, and he's got his fancy leathers and so and so." "Let's see how good he is."" "so I think there was a tendency to write him off as an actor trying to do our job." "Oh, I don't care if they're a movie star or a writer or a movie producer." "You don't want to lose to somebody that you feel that you've devoted more energy into it than they did." "The guys want to beat a Paul Newman twice as bad as they want to beat Joe Luce Scooch." "So I think, you know, you got a big bull's-eye on your back." ""Oh, I want to get that guy."" "If you race with somebody like Paul Newman, you want to beat them, because you figure they've been lucky enough." "His presence at a track would guarantee a large crowd." "If you could see the number of people that turned up from the press, from New York, from the big papers, and so forth." "He tried to have his privacy." "He'd have a motor home and go in the back before the race to cool down." "Paul loved his privacy." "We held the spectators off enough that they still got to see Paul" "And they got a press kit or something like that, maybe, without abusing Paul." "And I would get him, like, Friday afternoon at 3:00 for 15 minutes." "And then I would go to the media and say, "if you ask him racing questions..." "He loves to talk racing." "We're racers." "He'll talk racing for the next hour." "If you want to know 'what's Joanne's next movie?" "', he's gonna have to go talk to the crew chief pretty quickly." "He was really the real Paul Newman when he was around people that he really cared for and he was relaxed." "Except for your race, the only good thing was the bratwurst." "I think that Paul was approachable, but he was very discerning on where he gave his time and what he did," "Because he was concentrating on something else." "I mean, driving." "Does he want to have somebody come up and stick a piece of paper in his face and say, "sign the autograph"?" "No." "That would get him a little hot." "It got me a little hot, too." "He was so adored, I think, all over the planet that he just like to be like a regular guy." "He was in popular movies but was also kind of an outsider." "He stayed in the trailer." "He didn't want to stay in the, you know, the plaza, and a limo didn't take him to his car." "You know, he was just a guy." "Well, I think he liked the camaraderie, and I think the fellowship of that relationship with the fellow drivers..." "there's nothing like it." "It's not anything you can have in Hollywood at all." "He loved joking around, he loved companionship, and you can see that, but he probably shifted from the film world into the racing world." "You can see that he adopted a lot of friendships." "Fitzy, of course, was like almost a mascot for our team." "Just the most personable guy." " Hi, Sam." "How are ya?" " So, congratulations." "How was it?" "Nice." "He was a very, very good driver." "He was a gentleman PR guy for auto racing, and he was the chief instructor at Road Atlanta, a great guy." "Everyone loved him." ""Teddy bear" Jim Fitzgerald." "He befriended Joanne." "They were both a little bit southern." "They got along very, very well, and he befriended Paul." "He even likes to let everybody think he's 60." "He's really 50." "And everybody thinks I'm 50, and I'm really... 40." "No, I'm not." "It's nice to have a teammate who, at the beginning of the year, was given a certificate to Forest Lawn the same way that I was." "That was on behalf of the younger drivers." "They've also offered to buy us teeth when we needed them and Polident..." "A year supply of Polident..." "And that special stuff that you glue your hair on with." "But, by the same token, a lot of those kids have got diaper rash." "Fitzgerald loved him as a buddy." "I think they were good friends." "Paul tried to get Jim a little, tiny spot in a movie one time, and Paul had ended up putting the words across his chest so" "Jim would get them right on about the 12th take, you know?" "We don't have to race." "It's fun being with him just as a friend or visiting or palling around, but to race in addition," "I couldn't ask for anything nicer." "It's terrific on two counts." "I count him as a friend, for one thing, and we drive very much the same and we don't have to apologize to those young kids out there... yet." "Deceit and treachery will always triumph over youth and good intentions anyways." "There is no sport more exciting than racing." "This is the next best thing to heaven." "They had never seen it before." "A black driver this fast, this competitive?" "They weren't ready for that." "It wasn't easy." "It was real tough to find support." "You could feel, in a lot of respects, the animosity." "I was on a mission to head up that ladder to the top of the sport, which, for me, was Indycar." "To the outside retaining wall as he heads down the 1,730-foot..." "I first met Paul in the pits, and it was brief, but he was paying attention." "And he said, "keep up the good work."" "I wasn't a paid driver to that point." "I was getting paid a percentage of the prize money, but I wasn't receiving a monthly check." "It was hard." "I didn't have the money to buy my own racer or own my own team, so I would do about five or six races a year" "Until I got the call..." "Until I got the big call." "It was the day before thanksgiving that I got the car from P.L." "Said, "hey, kid," "I think I've got a deal for you if you want it." "Trans-Am team is going to call you tomorrow." "I recommended you." "If there's any problems, call me."" "And it changed everything." "When Paul got me that deal," "I was a paid race driver." "Not only did he get me a job, he got me in one of the best teams..." "If not the best team..." "In the championship, competing against him." "In my first year, I won 5 out of 11 races, and I was rookie of the year." "And then in '85, I won damn near all of them." "Emerson Fittipaldi..." "A.J. Foyt, Willy T. Ribbs staring into history." "For me and my career, Newman was, without question, one of the most important people of them all." "Ribbs made history, becoming the first black driver to tour the circuit." "If it wasn't for him," "I would've never been a professional." "I would've never been in Indycar and in the Indy 500." "It was..." "He was very private man." "So the last thing you would ever think that he's a practical joker." "What are your plans for next year?" "Well, I'm doing some porno flicks out in new Mexico." "You know, I need a nurse." "A nurse?" "Hey, Sal, come on in here." "You need to be a nurse." "He called me one day, and he said," ""this is David Stern from the National Enquirer." "We've been informed that you been bunging iguanas on a Denver street corner."" "I said, "well, iguanas don't get that far north." "They end in Arizona." "They're not getting up into Colorado." "It's too cold."" "And he started laughing." "He said, "you busted me, kid."" "I had this hat that I really liked." "Paul didn't think it was worthy of me, I guess." "You know, we had some shotguns, and somebody grabbed the hat and threw it up in the air." "Paul went bam, bam, bam." "And, of course, my hat was riddled with little, tiny holes all over." "I got a picture from him, and I'm to the side of him, looking like he said something shocking." "He signed it, "actually, the truth is, I'm Willy's dad!"" "We had this relationship where we'd play jokes on each other." "And so, I'm thinking, "I've heard enough about cars."" "You know, the guy can't stop." "So I went to a towing service." "I said, "can you find me a crushed car?"" "And they just happened to find a crushed Porsche." "And I said, "okay, would you wrap it in wrapping paper and put a ribbon around it and deliver it to Paul Newman's back porch?"" "They did, and I called them." "I said, "you do that?" and he said, "yeah, I did."" "I said, "anybody there?" "No." "No."" "So I didn't hear anything." "A couple of weeks goes by and I go to my house, which was rented." "I go in there, and in the foyer is this big box." "And the box is obviously heavy, because it's put a dent in the floor of the house that I'm renting, which means I'm gonna have to pay for it." "Took me about an hour to crowbar the box apart, and there was this big block of metal..." "Big square block of metal." "I said, "okay, I got it."" "So then I called a friend of mine who was a sculptor and a lady and I said, "look, if I deliver you some materials," "Could you sculpt something for a garden?"" "She goes, "oh, that'd be great."" "I knew she wasn't a particularly good sculptor, so that was part of the deal." "And three weeks later, she called to say it was finished." "Called the towing service back." ""Pick this up and take it and put it in Newman's garden."" "So they did." "And to this day, Paul and I never spoke a word about it." "I guess that sums up our relationship in a way." "He liked to build what the English call Q-cars, which are cars that look normal but have incredible abilities." "Occasionally, I would meet a guy that would say," ""I was in Connecticut, and this Volkswagen pulls up, and it's Paul Newman" "And he just blew my doors off."" "He would drive a disguised Volvo station wagon with about a 650-horsepower engine in it." "He just wanted to be, you know, totally incognito, if you will." "But if you recognized him, it was a time for him to just, you know, open somebody's eyes." "You know, he would do that." "He was just that kind of guy." "We loved Paul for Paul, not because he was an actor." "He was a wonderful human being, a great guy to be associated with." "The kind of a guy... "hey, let's have a beer."" "And I think he liked the Westport countryfied atmosphere versus the Hollywood atmosphere." "I had taken Paul and his son around Lime Rock" "When I first met them." "He was a California guy, and he passed on of an overdose." "The tragedy of his death, it was something that was never really talked about." "I think what Paul did with that was he made it his business." "I said to Paul, "Paul, would you like to take some time off?" "I know this is a difficult time."" "He said, "Sharp, practice me five days a week if you can." "I can't change it," "I feel badly that it happened," "But the less I think about it, the more I motor on." "And racing's a wonderful thing, 'cause it consumes you."" "When you get out to that track and you sit down in that car, whatever it is that's roiling around in your head," "It just goes right out the window." "And then the tiger in the tank came out." "Newman's begun to accelerate, and the green flag hasn't even been dropped." "Newman's timed it perfectly." "I used to be able to be psyched." "You know, you can't psych me anymore." "I'll see a guy in my mirror." "You know, two years ago," "I'd say, "oh, god, he's gonna catch me."" "And now I say, "well, I'm gonna show him where it's all at."" "We won 15 out of 17 races that year." "He is headed through turn number 12, and Paul Newman is going to be" "The "C" production 1979 national champion." "The margin of victory... 6.3 seconds between first and second." "Last year, you were second, and you said then maybe you could be first with a little help from the driver." "How do you feel about the driver right now?" "Well, I don't know." "That car worked so..." "You know, usually, it's a sign of modesty... baloney." "Shirley Temple could've gotten in that thing and gone like a rocket." "I think although the two of us are surely not two peas in a pod," "I think we complement each other very much." "I thought it was a winning combination, and I did have confidence that he would be a winner in our cars." "How do you feel as a driver?" "Are you proud of what you've just done." "Yeah, it felt pretty good." "I mean, the last time I inherited, you know, the championship, and this time I won it fair-and-square." "There goes Paul Newman out for another run." "I met Paul in 1977 when we were teammates on a Ferrari team running the "24 hours of Daytona."" "We really got along very well from the very beginning." "Paul was a very competitive driver." "He did not want to take a backseat to anybody." "In 1978, my team went to the "24 hours of Le Mans,"" "where we were fortunate enough to win there." "Right after that race, Paul called me and said," ""Dick, I'd really like to take a shot at winning Le Mans."" "In the world of racing, Le Mans is the epitome." "It's every race driver's dream to race there and to win there." "They even made a movie about it." "The world's best drivers competed there..." "Formula one drivers, sports-car drivers," "Indianapolis drivers." "I raced at Le Mans nine times and won in my class twice and won third overall." "It's certainly an event that garners attention from all over the world." "You get 300,000 to 400,000 people every year." "The infield is packed with campers from every country." "The ambiance is absolutely incredible." "It's exciting." "It's a 24-hour race that starts at 4:00 in the afternoon, and it ends at 4:00 the next day." "Three, two, one." "Whoever does the most miles in that period of time wins the race." "The word got out that Paul was one of the drivers on the team, and that went around the world and all the world press." "By the time that the first practice session came at Le Mans, the crowds had just doubled." "I had never seen that many people there, and it was mayhem, really, a chaos, especially at the racetrack." "The crowds were anxious to get in and see him." "We were staying at this delightful castle called Malicorne in Le Mans." "After the first night, we had a problem, because the paparazzi were actually climbing up and scaling the wall to get to Paul's room." "I felt the private person that he was was not a natural mix to go to the "24 hours at Le Mans."" "He was there to race the car, not to do autographs or not to pose for pictures and this and that." "They're a completely ungoverned bunch." "They're desperate." "They're rabid." "They don't care what the rules are, what dignity means, what privacy means." "They're a pain in the ass." "There's no question." "And I don't think Paul liked it anymore than I did." "He developed, over time, ways to deal with it, but you can only control so much." "In 1979, I drove a 935 Porsche." "It was identical to the car that Paul Newman drove." "We raced a Porsche 935 six-cylinder, twin-turbocharged Boxer engine." "We ran in qualifying over 800 horsepower." "In the race, probably 650 to 700 horsepower." "Top speed was over 220 miles an hour." "It was violent." "It was fantastic." "It was three drivers, one hour each." "Rolf started the race for us, I was the next driver, and then the third driver was Paul." "Paul and Rolf got along great." "Paul really respected the fact that Rolf was a formula one driver, a Porsche-factory driver." "Le Mans is a very unique track." "It is roughly eight miles long." "It's part permanent racetrack and part public highway." "Once a year, the Mulsanne freeway is closed off, and it becomes the Mulsanne straightaway." "For the first few laps, I think, "this is pretty stupid,"" "going down a two-lane highway at over 200 miles an hour with guardrails and trees on the side of the road." "My 512s Ferrari in 1970 went 248 miles an hour." "And you always have respect for it, because it's a very dangerous place to race." "You were racing at Le Mans this year, and a driver in your class died." "Yeah." "It was three minutes into the race." "It was a lot of weather there." " Oh, no." " An Aston, and it's a big one." "It's hard, because it's like part of your family." "You don't really think it's gonna happen anymore." "And then you got to get back out and do it." "And every time you went by that spot in the track, you had to be focused on moving forward and not think about what had happened." "Speed at Le Mans varies based on the conditions." "In the 1979 race, it was clear and then it was absolutely a cloud burst of incredible rain, incredible fog in the nighttime, which made it very, very dangerous." "The attrition during the race was quite high." "A lot of cars ending up in the guardrails, spinning off, not being able to finish." "55 cars started the race and only 22 finish." "An absolutely tough course." "In rain?" "At night?" "When I saw that, I said: "Wow." "He's real going somewhere."" "Our stints were one hour." "You would come in after an hour, take on a full load of fuel, change all four tires, and change drivers." "Hopefully in less than a minute, because every second you lost in the pits was very hard to make up on the track." "The paparazzi were really merciless, especially in our pits, and they were all over our car." "And we needed to get out on the racetrack, and Paul didn't want to run them over." "You have to block out everybody, 'cause if you start to really concentrate..." "certainly at Le Mans." "There's so many cameras everywhere." "If you are aware of that, you couldn't get in the car and function." "We had told Paul, when he gets in the car, he's belted in, and he's ready to go, just turn the ignition on, fire it up, and leave no matter how many people" "were in front of the car." "And he did, and he bowed over three paparazzi." "At about the 22nd hour, we found ourselves in the lead overall, and then, on the 23rd hour, we made a pit stop with about an hour to go, and one of the left-front tires, the nut" "had welded itself on because of the rain and the heat." "So we had to have a long pit stop, chisel off the front suspension, and replace it and get back in the race." "Some interviewer literally came over and grabbed Paul, trying to get an interview right when we were in the midst of doing our job." "We look at the camera, monsieur, pardon." "Merci." "The camera is right in front of you." "I just want to know exactly your impressions of Le Mans now." "After 22 hours, you are in second position in the race." "The idea that racing, which requires extreme concentration and focus, to have somebody interfere with that, to me, that's criminal." "Rolf took off, really bent on regaining the lead." "Unfortunately, we kind of pushed the car too hard." "We lost a cylinder." "And so Rolf had to baby the car that last hour, and we ended up second overall but first in the IMSA class." "At the end of the race, the crowd absolutely emptied the grandstands and came onto the track." "The crew had to form a barricade around the car, and it was pushed up to victory circle." "It was very exciting, very magical." "Paul, many times after that." "He said it was the most rewarding race of his life." "I was just little Dickie Barbour from La Mesa, California, and all of a sudden, you know, we're in this limelight." "Anybody would be pretty struck by having this happen to them." "I think we were kind of standing back, watching all this happening, and it was certainly a matter of pride for us, you know, because he did choose to race with us." "After Newman was in the car that finished second overall at Le Mans, his stock went up with a lot of people." "Other drivers from around the world really developed incredible respect for Paul and that he was one of them, because they all knew how difficult winning at Le Mans was, and most of them had never won." "It legitimized all of us, the victory there." "I believe that Paul didn't go back for the reason that the paparazzi just made it so difficult for him to concentrate." "It kind of took the pleasure out of it for him." "The victory lap and the taste of triumph certainly aren't new to Newman and to his race crew, but the big payoff is the national championship trophy." "It's not an Oscar, but to Paul Newman, it's the honor he seeks most in his second career." "Will he retire when he gets it?" ""Hey," he says, "I'll retire when I get slower, not older."" "He really felt at home here." "People in racing, they knew who he was, and they were impressed by him, but they didn't bug him." "When P.L. was at the racetrack, he was another race driver, in his mind." "He wasn't P.L. Newman the movie star." "He was P.L. Newman the race driver." "And he conducted himself like that, and he never put himself on a pedestal ever." "He was just another driver that you wanted to beat." "You know, he got that much credibility." "People didn't even think of him being a movie-star racer." "He was just a racer." "There was a little boy, standing with his mother, and Paul walked by, and I heard this." "The mother grabbed the little boy and said:" ""Do you know who that is?"" "And the little boy said:" ""Yeah, it's Paul Newman."" "And she said: "Yes, but do you know who he is?"" "And he said:" ""Yes, it's a racer."" "And I thought, "isn't that wonderful?"" "Because that's what would make Paul very happy." "He drove in the "24 hours of Daytona,"" "and then won worldwide recognition by finishing second in the famous 24-hour race at Le Mans." "This last year, Paul's fascination with racing has been such that he's competed in more events." "In fact, some people think he's spending more time with his racing career now than with his movie career." "Every year, I keep saying that I'm gonna, you know, stop all this." "So now it looks like I got a couple of really good scripts that will go during the spring and the summer." "So all I have to do is burn all those scripts, you see, so I can get back in the car again." "He wasn't so much divided between the two." "It was that film would come second to racing." "What is the mystique about beating the other guy, about winning?" "Well, whatever it is, it's a mystique that's held in high reverence by people in racing." "And I was driving the pro cars, and Paul was driving the amateur circuit." "But then he got so good that it made sense for him to join me in the pro races." "The car in the background here was a big IMSA contender." "We had over 900 horsepower." "I had to make a choice when I went from amateurs to professional racing, whether I wanted to be a big fish in a little pond or a little fish in a big pond." "Going from 300-some-odd horsepower to 900 horsepower is that quantum leap that you keep talking about." "I think I was away 24 weekends this summer." "If I wasn't racing, the Can-Am team was racing or I was running out to Ohio to visit Joanne who was doing a play out there, and I felt as though I was inside of a meat grinder," "but all I got to do if I don't want to do it is stop." "I was worried about him." "I really was seriously concerned." "His whole career looked as though it was gonna because all he wanted to do was race." "They'll have to strap me down before they keep me out of these things." "Welcome back, Joanne." "We understand you taught him everything he knows." "Of course." "Absolutely." "And that's why he drives so well." "Joanne has really, through all of this, you know, when I was racing badly, she was supportive." "When I was racing well, she was supportive." "She keeps asking the eternal question," ""well, next season, what?" "Do we go to France and Paris, or is it Somers Point and Pocono."" "And she's been just patient beyond all belief." "Anything can happen when you're in a race car, and I think that that was a thing that she was very concerned about, about with him becoming, in some way, injured with the family and all of that and also starting late in life." "Racing was more dangerous then than it is now, and it was always a risk to have him at the wheel." "He was very aggressive, you know." "You can drive hard and you can even drive extra hard, and you're not gonna win any races." "The only way that you're ever gonna win a race is just to be right on the edge of it all the time." "He was not afraid to test the limits." "And sometimes, you got to get off and go off the track or brush that wall to find out where the limit is." "Oh, Newman and Bowman have gone off." "And he's had a lot of spins, and there have been a couple of times" "When he didn't come around." "You know, when I'm sitting, waiting, and saying," "Like, "what happened?" "Where did he go?"" "Newman was on Viagra before they even made Viagra." "He was a hard-dick brother." "I didn't want to see him do it, because it was dangerous, and I didn't want to see anything happen to him." "I think everybody wanted him to quit racing except him." "He was under no pressure to win." "He was under no pressure to go fast." "He didn't have to." "That's not how he made a living." "He was challenging himself as a man." "What's your strategy going to be?" "Just drive the race and try to stay alive." "A racing driver is very aware of the fact that death can happen at any time just because you're going so fast and there's so many things out of your control..." "The weather, other cars, mechanical failures, tire failures." "But you're so passionate about being a race driver that that overcomes all those senses." "The biggest vintage-car race in the country is the Monterey Historics." "In 2010, one of the cars I drove was the 1958 Scarab." "The race started, we went over the hill, and just before the Andretti hairpin, one car misjudged the speed of the car that he was catching at the back of the pack and spun." "The car right behind him lost control trying to avoid him, hit the guardrail on the inside, and bounced across the track as I passed and ran into me in the back... my left rear corner..." "and started flipping the car." "After the crash, the car was loaded on a flatbed..." "Well, the remains of it." "And, in essence, it was destroyed." "But you can fix anything, especially when it's worth $6 million." "And I thought my neck was broken, but I raced again in a month." "You know what this reminds me of?" "The theater." "It has its audience, its cast, its drama, comedy, and sometimes it's tragedy, too." "Things happen in a microsecond, and sometimes it's not in your control like it wasn't in Rolf's control." "In the LA Times grand prix in 1983, going into turn 9 at well over 200 miles an hour, his rear wing broke." "Paul understood the danger of racing firsthand after Rolf died." "Paul loved making salad dressing, and at Christmas time, he and A.E. Hotchner, the author, would make up salad dressing." "They'd put it in an old wine split, and they'd give it to the neighbors and the relatives." "And on a Saturday night cookout, often we'd barbecue out at the track where the guys are working on the car." "Paul would go get all the ingredients to make his salad dressing." "So we'd have salad and hamburger and fruit, and he would say, you know," ""I really want to go into salad-dressing business."" "Sam Posey's wife designed the label, and Paul Newman was in the salad-dressing business." "He and my wife, Ellen, started hanging out." "He said, you know, "I'd like the label to be not one of the traditional salad dressings." "Would you be interested in doing the label for me?"" "So she said sure, and she came and mocked one up" "Right within a day right there." "And he loved that, and that's the way it went." "Her name is actually in among the leaves." "And so, we figure she's the most reproduced fine artist in the history of the world." "The second that someone said, "the only way you're gonna make this work" is to put your face on the label, that's the second the money went to charity." "I think that you have a choice about what you're gonna do your life with success." "Some people want to further it or you want to stop and say, "look, I don't need that much."" "I would get more satisfaction if I can create some kind of a mechanism to give other people an opportunity they may not have." "Paul chose the camp for sick kids." "We have five in the United States." "We have one in Ireland, one in France, one in the south of England." "I think this year, we had 13,000 kids in camp..." "All of it free." "Paul was precise." "So was Jim." "I mean, these are two very professional road racers, and both wanted to beat each other with a passion." "There were times when Fitzy would dive-bomb Paul." "There was also times where "honor the senior friend who helps all of this happen."" "So it wasn't an, "after you, Alphonse," kind of a deal." "Yet I think Paul would put together more consistent laps to have a little bit of an edge on Fitzy." "The battle shaping up..." "Paul and Fitzy battling for the lead." "He's got Fitzgerald right on his tail." "And, sure, Paul knows and likes Fitzy." "Theirs is one of the oldest friendships in the sport." "Last lap... the pace has not slackened." "Jim Fitzgerald has pushed hard the whole way, but Newman hasn't faltered, nor has his car." "It looks like he's going to win this one the way he won his last national championship back in '79..." "Wire-to-wire." "I mean, I never heard him lord over people, "I won this race."" "He would say, "I was very lucky."" "You know, "when we were doing this," "I was fortunate enough to have this crew..."" "Whatever it might be." "I wouldn't see him today tweeting out victories or sending Facebook pictures." "You know, it just makes me laugh." "It's that sort of stoic, American way." "I like the kind of racing where there's no spectators." "That seems like a rather sour thing to say, but that's when I have the most fun." "Just flip it up, and it'll take a little less drain off before you start it." "Paul had a desire to go out to tracks and run cars during periods when he was making films." "When Paul did "The Color of Money" with Tom..." "Pretty damn good." "Not bad for a blind man." "After days of filming, he would go find some little 1/8-of-a-mile dirt track or something and take a few laps to blow off the steam." "He had so much fun, he said, "hey, Tom, why don't you come on out with me and have some fun running around this little racetrack?"" "Well, Tom had a ball." "So Paul called me up, and he said, "do you think" "Nissan would make a showroom stock car available for Tom?"" "The demographic for Tom for all of our sponsors was terrific." "So, absolutely, Nissan was interested." "He's been up in F-15s so he knows what that..." "You know, what the big roller coaster is like." "I think he was probably more excited by the driving than he was by the flying." "Of course, that car had a sudden death at Watkins Glen at about 80 miles an hour into the guardrail." "Tom wanted to win immediately, and I did everything I could." "I had a lot of fun with Tom, but I tried to get him to have the patience, and many times, you know, he was racing against people who had ten years' experience on him." "Well, Tom won a couple of races during the year, so he had the potential of doing very well." "But he'd tried to cover up a mistake immediately, which often got him into a bigger mistake." "He's off the track." "He's trying to correct." "It's 90% mental, 10% physical." "The discipline, you know, plays such a key part." "That's the most challenging, definitely." "I really haven't had the amount of time that I need to really form a relationship with the car and understand what it's gonna do under extreme conditions." "Paul pulled him aside." "We sent him to Fitzy a half a dozen times down to Road Atlanta, 'cause here's the chief instructor uncle Fitzy," "And Fitzy loved Tom." "They got along very, very well." "And we put together his showroom stock two different classes, which led to Tom doing the film, "Days of Thunder."" "The second year, at Pocono, Tom got into a problem on the bow and instead of spinning the car, he corrected, and it went into the guardrail at about 130 miles an hour." "I think that was maybe the time when Mimi and Tom had a discussion that maybe the two years of racing was enough." "In a way, we were sorry to see Tom not stay with racing, but we have also were happy to see him retire unhurt." "Whoo!" "There was no doubt who the star of the 1986 Valvoline road racing classic was." "It's Newman's fourth national championship." "I guess he's on a bit of a roll." "Newman, who's known as a serious racer driver, won the Road Atlanta GT1 national championship." "So, I'm getting a little long in the tooth." "It's nice." "The young princes are coming up." "And it's time to let somebody else sit on the chair up here." "Paul Newman, the winner." "The popcorn's a winner." "Maybe he'll get an Oscar this year." "The pressure to win grew as he did win, and people expected him to win again, and he had to force the issue quite a few times." "When I went to the Road Atlanta for the runoffs my first year is when I first met Paul Newman." "He was clean most of the time, but it just seemed that there were times when he didn't qualify well that he didn't deal with that very well, and he knew he had a very fast car." "So there were times when he would sort of give it a real charge at the start and try to maybe "pass more cars before turn 1" kind of a thing." "That's usually where the problems happened." "And here comes a thundering herd with Newman in front." " Newman on the inside." " Oh!" "Newman and Herb here tangle and try out a tire barrier." "And there as Herb tried to turn into the corner, there was Newman." "But I'm not convinced either one would've made the turn." "I guess our paths really crossed in an official capacity when we were both racing professionally in the '80s in the Trans-Am series." "And to literally say our paths crossed, it was when we kind of crashed into each other." "But he remembered it, because when he gave me a ride on his scooter on the way to our cars on the pit lane." "Almost 15, 20 years later, I asked him to autograph that photograph." "And when he did, he wrote, "rear-ended again."" "So I'm like, I think he remembered..." " Yeah." " Those times, you know, in the past." " I don't know." " Are we ready?" "Racing against him, he wouldn't give you any room." "You had to work for it." "But he knew the reality in that sport." "You can, at the minimum, get hurt real bad..." "At the minimum." "We ran Jim basically in the southeast, and we ran in the northeast." "Now, at a few races..." "Mid-Ohio maybe," "Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin," "Road Atlanta..." "we'd all come together." "We were racing two Trans-Am cars at St. Petersburg." "Paul was ahead of Fitzy." "Elliot Forbes-Robinson of the No 11 Porsche, and Paul Newman who moved up from sixth to fifth at the start." "And Fitzy came down the straightaway and never braked for turn 1." "There you see Jim Fitzgerald in the No 38 Nissan." "It looks like he clipped the wall on the outside there, as you can see it on the left, and spun violently into that wall." "That's a very dangerous part of this track, actually." "He hit the Jersey barrier and careened backwards and went into the second one from whatever speed to zero in two feet." "You can see Jim Fitzgerald still inside the car and not moving." "He broke his neck when he hit the second barrier, so he was probably dead instantly." "How did Paul do in that race?" "He ran a couple laps and pulled in." " He couldn't continue?" " No, he couldn't continue." "Now, you know, we have some go-karts over there." "NBC has these long studios, and they're all empty." "So the hallway goes for 1/4 mile that way, go right, 1/4 mile back." "I said, "let's get some go-karts, and we'll race."" "There's your car right there." "So I'm practicing all day, and I'm, "this will be easy."" "You know, Newman comes in, looks at it, and he just gets that..." "When you see that racer glance, which I obviously do not have." "Paul, do you have any advice or otherwise for your man here?" "Pray for your life." "He gets in the car and..." "Zing!" "I mean, just a master driver." "He just had that innate ability, which is frustrating for people like me, who love this but realize I don't have the skill." "I don't have the ability, but he really did." "I mean, he beat me so horrendously bad..." "Killed me, just killed me." "Paul Newman manages to win." "This Bud's for the Paul Newman Can-Am racing team." "The Can-Am series was pretty much ending, and he had a team, so I suggested that maybe he would partner with Carl Haas." "I raced against Paul Newman." "I had a race team at that time in the Can-Am series, and Paul had a team." "We weren't particularly friends." "If we were in politics," "We'd probably be Castor and Rumsfeld." "Carl was the importer of the Lola cars." "Paul was the customer." "The cars were always delivered late and over weight." "Paul was accusing Carl of selling him heavy cars, and, you know, not giving him any sort of an advantage because Carl was competing against him." "For 1982, I wanted to get my ending program together." "And what you really need if you want to be successful in this thing is you need a good driver." "You need a top driver and then the rest of will come to you easier." "I was used a little bit to bring the team together." "Carl was pretty smart about it." "What he did is he hired me to drive his Formula 4, and in doing so, he had my dad now at the races, so in the background, he got closer to my father." "He was world champion on Formula 1." "He won races in NASCAR racing, he won races in dirt tracks, he won races in Indy cars, he won the Indy 500." "He was the best in the world." "I wanted to be part of a different team after the '82 season." "I said, "Carl, what about," I said, "a partnership with, like, Paul Newman?"" ""Oh, yeah, yeah." "I mean, Carl, you know, jumped on that immediately." "I won a Can-Am series dive, Carl called and said," ""how would you like to start an open-wheel racing team?"" "I said, "not a chance in hell, Carl."" "He said, "what if Mario was driving?"" "I said, "where would you like to meet?"" "It wasn't just that he was a fierce competitor, there was a real joy and delight." "The way he got in that car, I mean, he just snuggled up to it like a really good-looking lady, and he enjoyed everything about it." "When we first started off, he had a Lola car built for us and we took the car out racing to begin with, those first few races in Indianapolis, and the car was really bad." "Mario had a crash at Indy." " He's just..." " oh!" "That's the yellow car, Johnny Parsons, Mario Andretti." " Oh, no, Mario." " Andretti he hit the wall." "So we had a bad time." "Carl was all business." "The guy that would do anything necessary to get the basic ingredients, the best pit boss, the best engineer, you know," "The best driver, the best everything as far as running the team." "Yeah!" "The flying Frenchman has done it again." "You can't even describe Carl Haas." "He was that guy who had been in the racing business forever, who was very mystic, you know, was blessing the cars" "Before the race, and Paul being so candid about, you know, racing and just, you know, enjoying it." "Paul was the guy that would just keep everything under control, if you will." "If I had a misunderstanding with Carl," "Paul would always be the one to come in and smooth things out." "19-year-old Graham Rahal in his first Indy-car series start will win, the Honda grand prix at St. Pete." "He was always that type of owner that wasn't really a boss, just more of a friend, and I just loved being around him." "He was really good to drive for, 'cause he understood the pressures that the drivers were under." "He would let his guys do what they do best." "With a very consistent engineering office, mechanics mostly stayed the same for the five years I was there." "So it was just a very well-sorted team." "Those four years that we were together before I left for Formula 1 were probably my favorite times of racing." "I really felt like it was a family team from Paul and Carl to, I mean, obviously, dad and myself." "I mean, it was just a perfect situation." "5,000 people here for Andretti." "His first victory at Long Beach." "There's even hugging and kissing going on." "During the first couple years or so," "Paul and I weren't real close, but I think we came closer as time went by." "I had the longest stint in my career for a single team by driving for Paul Newman and Carl Haas." "You couldn't find any more opposite people to work together and form one of the best race teams in America ever." "Michael Andretti, as he receives the congratulations of his pit crew." "This day is all about Cristiano de Matta, who has clinched the championship." "And there is the checkered flag for Nigel Mansell." "Here comes Paul Newman now." "I think you get the idea of how much it means to this team." "This man in 2004 and again in 2005 is the series champion." "The Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais is going to do something nobody's done before... four straight champ car titles." "Will we ever see Paul Newman or another racing film like "Winning" maybe again some day?" "I've been looking for a script, a good script, for 12 years, and I have not been able to find one." "I was determined, even though it was an animated film with cars as the characters." "But I wanted it to be authentic." "I wanted the racing to be authentic." "I wanted the pit stops to be authentic." "As they talk about the racing, I wanted it to be authentic." "I've always been a big Paul Newman fan," "But also, I was very aware that he was really quite a talented race car driver." "And we started thinking, "I wonder if Paul Newman would be willing to do a voice in our film."" "If I want him out of my court room," "I want him out of our town." "I mean, this is like shooting for the moon." "I mean, Paul Newman, the greatest American actor." "You know, I'm always like, "well, let's give it a try." "I mean, the worst is he'll say 'no.'"" "And soon after that, we got the word that, yes, he would love to do this." "He's really smart, and what he loved about it was the history." "And we started talking about the Hudson 1," "And he started giving me his knowledge and memory of it, and how it influenced modern cars and so on." "One of the great things about Paul Newman is his knowledge of racing." "And his knowledge of racing helped make the character of Doc Hudson in "Cars"" "a much deeper and much more complex character." " Look at those trophies!" " You look, all I see is a bunch of empty cups." "There's just a quality when he gets into the joy of racing." "There's words he uses, phrases he uses." "And if you watch Doc Hudson in "Cars," it's Paul." "All right, you can drive as good as you can fix a road." "He's getting excited with Lightning McQueen" "On the track in the final race, and he just goes, "hot snot!" "We're back in business!" hot snot!" "We are back in business." "That was so funny, and it was pure him." "We had the scene where he is teaching" "Lighting McQueen to drive on dirt, and as I talked to these guys who drive on dirt, there's a term they use, which we loved, is that you turn right to go left." "If you're going hard enough left," "You'll find yourself turning right." "He says, "no, you don't just turn right to go left." "If you just turn the wheel, you're gonna go that direction." "You got to break it loose, and then you start steering into the turn."" "And he really was defining it, and if you watch the movie," "That's exactly what Doc Hudson says." "You got to pitch it hard, break it loose, and just drive it with the throttle." "And it's great, 'cause Autoweek Magazine called it the best car movie ever because of all the details and how we got it right." "And that is in great part to Paul Newman, and," "You know, what he gave to us." "And he knew we were striving to be authentic." "And he was there for us and shared his enthusiasm for racing, his passion for racing, his knowledge of racing." "And he wanted that in the movie, and it's there." "You got a lot of stuff, kid." "We got this for Paul Newman." "We wish him very good luck and many more races." "It's gonna be very hard to quit, but, at some point, you lose your endurance." "Boy, in the middle of July, and it's 130, 140 degrees in that car..." "I'll tell you, it takes it out of you pretty quickly." "He semi-retired, and he bought one of our Nissan turbo cars." "He was, at that point, ready to do Tuesdays at Lime Rock for fun." "Well, he had so much fun doing that that he decided to race it seriously." "I said, "well, Paul, if you want to race a lot, why don't you buy a ex-Trans-Am car?"" "It's a Trans-Am tried car, two-year frame, a lot of horsepower..." "We get around the course in under a minute." "To know that you've done a lap where you put everything together a couple, three, four times in a row, that's exciting." "And especially when you get to be my age, it's just a privilege to be able to sit in that car." "His last couple of races were here, and one of them was in the rain." "And he was just brilliant." "I mean, he was 82." "The car number was his age." "Paul ran against a whole bunch of Trans-Am quality drivers and beat them." "That was the last car he raced." "So, Paul ran up until he was 83." "I think the fact that he made something of himself when the odds seemed to be against it is an outstanding feat." "He was very specific on what he wanted to do in life, and this was a big part of it." "He excelled at acting, very good at racing, and an all-around decent guy." "I mean, it's that classic red-blooded American boy who tried hard and didn't, you know, always try to have the spotlight on himself." "But then when he won, it was "oh, he won this on his own."" "Whoo!" "He just had this magnificent quality, you know, as a human being." "As a human being, he was a terrific, terrific man." "Paul's legacy really is all the charities and all the cancer kids and the wonderful things that he supported." "You know, Paul sprinkled his winnings and success and profits from his food company all around the world to help a lot of deserved people that wouldn't have been helped otherwise." "I know that for him, you know, one of his happiest moments was when he'd go to the camp in Connecticut, and he built himself a little cabin on the property, and he could go and hide out." "And the kids had no clue who he was, and that's all it was about for him." "I knew he was sick, but for some reason," "I just never felt that anything could happen to Paul." "The last race that he came to, he made an effort to, like, sit down and just have a chat." "He kept staring at me in the eyes, you know." "I'll never forget that." "You know, there was something like a premonition, like he thought, "this is gonna be our last conversation."" "He made a special trip up here." "He was gonna drive a few last laps." "The track was closed that day." "But he was too weak for that." "He sat in the back seat of a station wagon and was driven around." "He knew that was gonna be his last trip up here and it meant a lot him to come to this place where everything had started." "He didn't want to have any visitors at the hospital." "In his last days, you know," "I'd have liked to have gone and seen him, but he didn't want that." "I don't think he wanted anyone to show any pity." "I think he had certain disdain for that." "I certainly remember my moments, and they were always precious." "I think about him often." "I spent 15 weekends a year with the man for 20 years, so I knew him pretty well." "He was a very special guy, and I was very privileged to have known him and been in his life a little bit, you know?" "Paul was a unique human being." "It was a thrill to call him a friend." "He was an unbelievably humble guy, who had a lot of great ability..." "More than he recognized in himself." "In a way, it's a shame he didn't start 20 years earlier, what, do you feel like he could have been one of the best?" "Absolutely, absolutely." "What do you miss about Paul Newman?" "Everything about him." "Every minute." "They just don't make them like him anymore." "They don't make them like that." "I think the whole of Paul Newman is what I miss." "He's one of those rare individuals that can never be replaced in any way, shape, or form." "Everything positive you could think of about a human being, that represented Paul Newman." "I consider myself luckier than Paul because I had Paul for a brother." "He couldn't say that." "Source used:" "Maur0"