The 2025 Rolex 24 at Daytona delivered its trademark excitement, with Porsche Penske Motorsport making history by claiming back-to-back outright victories at the famed Florida circuit. The team’s No. 7 Porsche 963 triumphed in a nail-biting finish, holding off Meyer Shank Racing’s No. 60 Acura ARX-06 by just 1.5 seconds at the chequered flag.
For the fans who filled the grandstands and campsites at the legendary venue, however, this year carried an added sense of occasion. Beyond the thrilling finish, the 24-hour race of attrition fell on January 26, which would have been the 100th birthday of Daytona’s most famous competitor: the late Hollywood actor turned racing driver Paul Newman. Adding to the significance was the fact that Newman won this very contest in 1995 – exactly 30 years ago.
Newman’s legacy was highlighted throughout the weekend. Many of the 61 cars on the grid wore commemorative decals honouring the Oscar-winning actor, while a parade lap of race cars he had driven during his career brought his passion for speed to life. Fittingly, the race winners were once again presented with a Rolex Daytona – the highly coveted timepiece that Newman himself helped turn into a horological icon.
They say be careful meeting your heroes, but that was never the case with Paul – he was literally cooler than the characters he played
Aside from Steve McQueen, few actors have ever blurred the line between Hollywood and racing quite like Paul Newman, who died in 2008. Handsome and charismatic, he was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars during the 1960s, delivering masterful performances in films such as Cool Hand Luke, The Hustler and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
By a stroke of destiny, it was Hollywood that propelled Newman towards his second career as a racing driver and team owner. While preparing for his role as IndyCar driver Frank Capua in the 1969 film Winning, Newman was sent alongside co-star Robert Wagner to the famous Bob Bondurant Racing School in 1968 to learn the art of performance driving. Needless to say, he was hooked.
Given his racing résumé, it is remarkable that Newman’s passion for motor sport emerged relatively late in life – he did not contest his first race until 1972, when he was 47. Nevertheless, he proved to be an incredibly talented driver and spent much of the ’70s competing for Bob Sharp Racing in the Sports Car Championship of America (SCCA). He found plenty of success in the series, too, claiming the SCCA title on four occasions.
The combination of Newman’s preternatural talent and headline-grabbing star power quickly saw him make cameos in some of the world’s most prestigious races. He made his Daytona debut in 1977 and returned in 1979, finishing an impressive third and fifth in class respectively. Later in ‘79, Newman tackled the most famous endurance race of all: the Le Mans 24 Hours. Driving a fearsome Porsche 935 alongside Dick Barber and Rolf Stommelen, he finished second overall and won his class.
Yet even after his Le Mans heroics, few would have predicted that Newman would achieve another remarkable result at Daytona in 1995, at the age of 70. Driving for Roush Racing in the GTS-1 class, he won his category and finished third overall, making him the oldest driver ever to win a professionally sanctioned race – a record that still stands.
An eyewitness of Newman’s ability behind the wheel at Daytona in 1995 was his team-mate that year, four-time Trans-Am champion Tommy ‘TK’ Kendall. “It was the first time I raced alongside him, but our relationship went back quite a way,” TK recalls over the phone.
“Before I even started driving, my dad was deeply involved in sports car racing through Pete Smith, who was a Porsche dealer in North Hollywood. Pete knew Paul because he had sold him some cars. One day, Paul was in town for a movie and wanted to do some laps, so Pete arranged for him to drive my dad’s Lola T600 at Willow Springs. I was only 19 at the time, preparing for my first race at Daytona in a Mazda RX-7, but I got to spend some time with Paul – which was incredible. Before racing with Paul in ’95, I had done two seasons in Trans-Am, where he had most of his racing success. We weren’t close, but I knew him reasonably well, and we were colleagues around the track.”
Newman stopped competing in Trans-Am after 1988, but continued to make occasional IMSA appearances. His 1995 Daytona entry was financially backed by Paramount Pictures, which used the event to promote Newman’s latest film Nobody’s Fool.
TK continues: “By 1995 I’d been with Roush Racing for two years, after coming back from a big accident. Roush had won Daytona nine times in a row before sitting out 1994. Paul called Roush’s team manager at the time, Max Jones, to ask how much it would cost to run a car at Daytona. I don’t think Max was keen on the idea, so he came up with a figure that no one in their right mind would agree to. Paul simply replied: ‘Let’s do it – Paramount is paying for everything.’”
Roush’s deal with Paramount would see Paul and TK team up with stock car legend Mark Martin alongside Mike Brockman, an amateur racing driver and Hollywood stuntman. “Mike was probably Paul’s best friend at the time – they were inseparable. He had done a good bit of racing in Camel Lights, so he had some good experience but hadn’t driven for a few years.”
With the agreement in place, Roush embarked on a mad dash to prepare the team for a race it never intended to enter, over a tight three-month period. “Fortunately, we had the core Trans-Am team, and there was a lot of diversity in the rules that allowed tube-frame chassis, different powerplants and varying weights. Reliability was also a huge factor – it wasn’t like today, where it’s just flat-out racing. You had to pace yourself so that the car didn’t break.”
Even so, it was incredibly impressive that Roush’s Ford Mustang – which wore no. 70 in reference to Newman’s age – made the grid at all. The fact that Roush finished third overall and won the GTS-1 class is nothing short of miraculous. But that’s not to say it was completely smooth sailing.
“Before the race, Max Jones asked me to make a list of all the things we’ve learned at Daytona,” recalls TK. “It was basically a list of things not to do, including not hitting the guardrail on the pit exit with cold tyres. I wrote that down three times for emphasis. Other things included pulling off to the left if you have an issue so that the marshals can access you through the fan areas, and to always keep 100 bucks in your pocket in case you needed a scooter ride back to the pitroad.
“Anyway, during Brockman’s first stint, his voice crackled over the radio, saying that he had a vibration. When he pitted, we found a massive dent in the wheel where he’d clipped the guardrail. He was too embarrassed to admit it while he was still in the car, and my crew chief quietly told me that we wouldn’t be waking him up for the next stint. Paul said his night vision wasn’t great – which is something I can empathise with now that I’m getting older – so he didn’t really want to drive at night. So Mark Martin and I ended up doing the night stints.”
Choosing not to drive at night turned out to be a sage decision, and Newman proved to be fast and almost faultless during his time in the Mustang’s cockpit. “I was ‘the guy’ at the time, so I was quickest, and Mark Martin was probably a few tenths off me because he wasn’t a road-course expert,” says TK. “Paul was about 1.8 seconds per lap off me. We had no assists and no traction control back then, so that was incredibly impressive for someone of his age.
“But Paul is one of the most competitive people I’ve ever met. It didn’t matter whether he was playing badminton, working out or racing – he was an intense competitor. One example of that was when we were practising driver changes. The door wouldn’t open, so you had to climb in and out through the window. Being so competitive, Paul wasn’t satisfied that he was getting out of the car fast enough. He told me: ‘Just grab my epaulettes and rip me out.’ I remember thinking: ‘This guy’s a national treasure – I can’t just yank him out like a rag doll. But Paul insisted, and it showed that he wanted to be treated the same as us.”
Once TK and Mark Martin had completed their gruelling night stints, it was up to Brockman and Newman to finish the race and bring the car home. “Mark and I had settled in through the night and there was plenty of attrition. So by the time the morning came, we were leading comfortably and sitting in third overall.
“With a couple of hours to go, Paul came down and Jack Roush said: ‘Hey, go and get dressed in your race suit.’ Paul said: ‘No, no, no, I’m done.’ Jack replied: ‘You’re the only reason we’re here, and I want you to take us across the finish line.’ Paul just didn’t want the spotlight, but Jack insisted – he was a total team player.”
After the race, Newman remarked that he had simply “cruised to the end”, humbly expressed gratitude for avoiding mistakes, and described the feeling of crossing the finish line as “tremendous”. Calm and collected, his low-key reaction was more reminiscent of someone who had just won a local karting race rather than one of the world’s biggest endurance events. But, despite downplaying it, Newman’s role had been pivotal, completing gruelling double stints while looking after the car.
TK, however, readily admits that winning Daytona with Paul in 1995 meant a great deal to him: “I’ve had a bit of a Forrest Gump-like career with some of the things I’ve done and the people I’ve met. But racing with Paul at Daytona, and our friendship afterwards, is right up there. They say be careful meeting your heroes, but that was never the case with Paul – he was literally cooler than the characters he played.”
