Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman Page #3

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

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