Paul Newman on Baja_138_p2.

1 10/1/05 12:53 pm Page 112

PAUL NEWMAN AT BAJA

+STAR
DUST
Hot, dusty, jarring, noisy, smelly...
no wonder 79-year-old screen
legend Paul Newman jumped at
the opportunity to take part in the
Baja 1000 desert race last year
Story Jeremy Hart
Photography Daniel Byrne
??? TopGear TopGear ???
Paul Newman on Baja_138_p2.1 10/1/05 12:53 pm Page 114

PAUL NEWMAN AT BAJA

SIX TIMES, BETWEEN 1958 AND 1982,

Paul Newman was nominated for Best Actor at
The Oscars. And six times he lost out. Neither
Cool Hand Luke nor The Hustler earned him a
coveted golden statue. And he didn’t even get a
nomination for his performance in The Sting.
So when he was nominated for Best Actor in
The Color of Money in 1987 he had no qualms
about politely turning down the invitation in
favour of a better offer. He planned instead to be
30 miles down the coast in Long Beach, sipping
coffee out of plastic cups and hanging out with
his Newman-Haas IndyCar racing team.
When the Oscar committee dropped larger
hints that it might be good for Newman to turn
up, he offered his then driver Mario Andretti as
a stand-in. But the Academy’s ban on non-
members accepting awards prevented Andretti’s
moment of Hollywood fame and ensured that
Newman – a reluctant star, but enthusiastic racer
– was there for his moment of celebration.
“I enjoy the people in racing, for the most part,
more than the people in Hollywood,” Newman
explains as we trundle through the Mexican
desert. We’re en route to the start of the Baja
1000 desert race in California, in which Newman
is about to participate – driving a dune buggy Newman loved the
belonging to the Centrix Financial Baja Team. way the buggy could
The truth is, Oscar or not, he would still rather handle the rough stuff

of how delicate the balancing act is between his
passion for racing and his passion for his wife. He
promises to call her as soon as he ends a race. But
today he has been a bit sneaky. He has told her
that he will start the race at the time he is, in
fact, expecting to end it. That way he saves her
fretting by the phone. I wonder how economical
he has been with the truth in the past.
“I’m just going to be an observer,” is the
furthest he admits to bending the truth. This
Mud? Oil? It’s a long
way from the glitzy weekend he has cushioned the blow by saying
lights of Hollywood “Honey, the cars only go 30mph.”
In fact, the average for a Baja buggy like the
the movie star, Newman senses the pressure.
He cares not. For him, racing is a drug.
“Every morning I wake up and I have a pulse,
I consider I’m ahead of the game,” he says as he
limbers up by touching his toes. He was up at
4.30 this morning for his daily stair-climb,
which he makes his entourage do as well. “So
long as I don’t embarrass myself, I’ll continue
doing it. It’s a kick in the rear.
“Here you must try to make sure that you
don’t hit any… you know, big stuff behind the
bushes. If you hit the big rocks with the sidewall,
the steering is going to be affected. But I’ll have a

have been in Long Beach that night in 1987.
Winning races and winning Oscars are incompa-
rable, Newman tells me over the course of the
unprecedented three days I spent with the legend.
“I’m a very competitive person. But there are
too many indefinable and immeasurable things
that go on in acting,” explains Newman. “On
one hand you don’t know what the director
contributed to the performance, you don’t know
what condition the script was in before the actor
got to it and what contribution he made to it,
you don’t know what was expected from you
emotionally from it, you don’t know how much
rehearsal time they had. And at the end a film is
an immeasurable thing; a series of components
that you’re trying to judge. In racing it’s clean.
You’re either a thousandth of a second before
somebody, or you’re a thousandth of a second
behind him. You can’t be competitive as an actor,
because there are too many imponderables. But
you can be competitive in a car.”
Newman might now have won two Oscars
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(the other was an honorary award) but he has
won considerably more motor races, both as a
driver and as a team owner. Not surprisingly,
he can remember every lap of every race he has
contested, but cannot remember every line of
every film he has shot. I suggest that maybe he
picked the wrong career…
“I can’t separate one film from another. But all
that says is I have a fairly good memory for racing
and no memory at all for films,” he retorts with a
broad grin. He is playing with me. So I ask him,
point blank, if he regrets not giving up the screen
for the circuit? “No. Listen, I started to race at
exactly the right time. I was 47. Nobody hoped
for very much, and I was a slow learner. I would
never have been in the first echelon of racers. I’m
actually surprised that I’ve done as well as I have.”
Newman is being modest. In the 32 years that
he has been on the track, a passion evoked after
making the Sixties race flick Winning, he has won
Daytona and finished second at Le Mans. But Le
Mans is a bitter-sweet memory for Newman.
Twenty-five years after being runner-up at Le
Mans in a Dick Barbour Porsche he believes he
could have won and knows he’d have enjoyed it
more if he had not been a film star at the time.
“It was a great race but the paparazzi made it
intolerable,” says Newman, arranging his Baja
race suit in the back of his Airstream caravan
as the time for the Baja race start looms. “One
morning I went for a jog. There was an aban-
doned car by the side of the road. As I ran past
five photographers hung out and started taking
photos. It got to be a real pain and by the second
minute I decided to run along with my finger up.
“But what really bothers me is the fact we
should have won Le Mans. The Whittington
brothers were first, even though they broke down
in the last few hours. The rule was a crew member
could not come within 50 yards of the car if it
broke down unless they were bringing food. They
could also give advice from a distance. Anyway
their mechanics turned up at the car with a
baguette about as long as the belt that was broken
‘Every morning I wake up and I have a pulse, I consider I’m ahead of the game’
on the car. The mechanics disappeared and five
Centrix Financial Team’s is closer to 40mph. guide, sitting there with a hammer and if I do
minutes later the car was running again!”
But 40mph over serrated desert sand littered with something, he just hits me in the privates.”
Newman was not the only Hollywood star
boulders the size of a Lotus Elise is an adrenalin- The ‘guide’ is Kiwi off-road and rally legend
to be consumed by racing in the Sixties and
pumping experience equivalent to 200mph-plus Rod Millen. He has been entrusted with the
Seventies. James Garner, whom Newman
on the Mulsanne Straight at Le Mans. multi-millionaire movie star’s safety, while at the
describes as “a good guy and a terrific driver”,
Newman is in the desert because the Baja 1000 same time ensuring Newman does his bit to keep
made Grand Prix. But it was Steve McQueen
is one of the “last great motoring adventures”. He the car in the thick of the dusty desert action.
to whom Newman was closest.
hadn’t even got to the bottom of the invitation
Something Newman regrets is the fact he and
from Centrix before he had said yes. The race is
McQueen never raced each other. McQueen’s
19 hours and 1,000 miles long. The bad news,
unexpected and early death was one factor, as was
which Newman doesn’t know yet, is that his
their geographical separation. McQueen lived in
stint is being limited to around 100 miles and
California. Newman, a Yale graduate, lived and
less than two hours behind the wheel.
still does live in New York and Connecticut with
Newman has been out to Mexico already
his actress wife Joanne Woodward.
for a test session in the Porsche 914-engined
“I must remember to call Joanne after the
buggy. He was hooked by the sensation of
race,” Newman suddenly says out loud, rather
rough-riding the desert at speed and the ability
like a verbal memo-to-self.
of the car to soak up the crevasses and boulders.
Their marriage is one of the longest in
Now, in a race where everyone wants to beat
Hollywood history. Newman is overtly aware
Paul Newman on Baja_138_p2.1
PAUL NEWMAN AT BAJA
“I remember seeing Cool Hand Luke when I was
a kid,” Millen had told me earlier. “Since then
I’ve always looked up to Paul. So it’s a huge wow
factor to actually ride with him.”
Millen has driven the first stint of the race and
put the Newman car in a good position two
hours into the day-long thrash. The Kiwi churns
up dust as he flicks the buggy into a remote re-
fuelling stop south of Ensenada. He moves across
and vacates the driver’s seat for Newman, who is
positively sprightly as he posts himself through
the letter-box-sized window. By the time the
fueller has removed the nozzle, Newman is
strapped in and revving the throttle. He means
business. A thumbs-up from BF Goodrich’s pit
crew chief and Newman buries the throttle and
nearly buries the assembled crowd in Baja dirt.
And with that Newman is gone, lost to the
desert for the next two hours. Desert racing is
a first for Newman but he has driven virtually
everything from the racing spectrum, including
an IndyCar and a NASCAR. Sèbastien Bourdais,
who just won the Champ Car title for Newman,
thinks Newman could even handle an F1 car.
“In a NASCAR he was only 4mph off the top
drivers’ speeds. That is awesome,” says Bourdais,
who is also in Mexico. “He is not scared to put
the pedal to the metal. If you put him in an F1
car he’d be able to drive it no problem.”
Newman’s first taste of F1 was at the Monaco
Grand Prix in the Seventies. After watching the
race from a trackside apartment he ended up at
the post-race gala dinner, sat between Prince
Rainier and Princess Grace.
“I am a beer drinker” Newman tells me with
a smile, “and so midway through the dinner I
needed to visit the gent’s room. So I turned
to Prince Rainier and said: ‘Excuse me, Your
Highness, where is the gent’s room?’ He says
‘Oh, I’ll show you’.
“And as we stand up, so of course does the
??? TopGear
10/1/05 12:53 pm
1,000 miles of corrugated
sandy roads mixed with
grimy dust. Irresistible
whole room. All 600 people on their feet. Just
because I needed to take a leak.
“Later one of the prince’s butlers said, ‘Next
time, Mr. Newman, allow me to show you.’ ”
Newman was the one who persuaded F1
champion Nigel Mansell to skip Grands Prix
and move to the States to take up Indy racing.
Newman talks fondly of Mansell. Sadly most
of the stories he tells of the plucky Brit have
to remain off the record.
“He was a better actor than I am. He would
play everyone off against each other,” Newman
does reveal. “He’d hustle me for every last nickel
and he was always the one to try to make every
last dime out of whatever... whether it was
‘Mr Newman does not want to be out of the car, he
thinks he is driving further. “Why the hell are you
pulling me out now?” Newman demands furiously’
driving, playing pool or even ping pong.”
Newman’s PA has spent the two hours whilst
he is in the Baja buggy pacing and fidgeting. She
knows that, if anything happens to him, she will
have to call Joanne Woodward with the news.
Woodward is back in New York, blissfully
ignorant of the fact that Paul is already racing.
Newman told me earlier that Woodward was
the one who admitted a few years ago that
racing actually improved Newman’s acting!
“Joanne said it was interesting to watch,”
explained Newman. “In about 1975 (just after
The Sting and about the time of The Towering
Inferno) a kind of boredom set in with what was
happening in films; the lack of experimentation
and the repetition of it. She said ‘then you got
involved in driving and some of that passion bled
back into your acting, and you got another jolt.’
She said it was recognizable.”
The radio crackles again. Newman’s PA
Page 116
twitches. But it is good news. Paul and Rod
are about a mile out of San Felipe and ready
for another driver change. She picks up her
cell phone to call New York.
“Hello? I want to leave a message for Joanne
Woodward please,” she says. “Just say that Mr
Newman is out of the car.’
Mr Newman, though, does not want to be out
of the car. He thinks he is driving further. But
the next stop is another five hours on. And even
for a fit 79-year-old, that is deemed too far.
“Why are you pulling me out now?” Newman
demands furiously. “I could have done this for
another two hours.”
I avoid the actor for a few hours until he has
calmed down a bit. Only when he buys me a
beer at a bar overlooking the Sea of Cortez, do
I dare ask him how it went.
“It’s a happening. It’s not just a race,” he kicks
off, sipping a cold bottle of Pacifico between
sentences. “The hardest thing is when you’re
following another car. There’s only one single
track and the dust gets to be so thick and so
dark, you can only see about 20 feet in front of
you. If the other car takes a sudden turn, then all
of a sudden you’re in the cactus.
“In the dust we made one mistake and had
to go back and turn around and come back
and pick up the right road. We lost two or three
minutes. But I’d like to do it again.”
Rod Millen sheds a little more light on his
two hours alongside Paul Newman, bisecting
dry salt lakes and navigating rocky ravines in a
sprint version of the Paris-Dakar.
“It was really quite fun,” says Millen. “The
only problem was, as a rookie on rough terrain,
he was looking too close in front and ended up
running into every hole you see. I got him to
look further away and that was much better.
“But all his years of racing mean he has very
good car control. He could flick it and put it
anywhere he wanted. And if it got out of shape
he could save it every time. Moreover we did
not get passed by anyone and, in fact, actually
started catching people up.
“It surprised me how well he did. With some-
one of 79, your first expectations are not too high.
But he really got into it quickly and it ended up
that I had to try to slow him down instead…”