I raced against him a number of times back in the mid-70, he was always a regular guy, and us young snot nose racers would always be trying desperately to keep up with him in our Datsun 240Z's. He always had perfectly prepared equipment and the half a dozen of us young guys with home built racers never had a chance to keep up, but we tried like hell.

I remember one day he had gone off the track in a race so he fell back behind all of us who now "were beating him" so he comes ripping through the field picking us off one by one (probably chuckling at each pass), he comes up on me (I was now in second and he’s not gonna beat me), and we go head to head into turn one, and I held him off (until turn 2 ……) then he blows by like a freight train.

I happily finished third (he wins), I’m in impound all proud and happy, Paul walks up to me and gives me a smile and said “Son you got a lot of balls, I’ll give you that”, I was sort of stunned that he even cared, then he asked me a few questions about who prepared my car and all that (I proudly said I did it all myself etc) then he calmly said “You know instead of stomping on the gas and the brake pedal like you do, just try and squeeze them, you’ll be a whole lot faster” and then calmly walked back to his trailer.

I was so surprised that he would actually offer some words of advice and even notice the seemly little mistakes I made (all the while I was trying cut him off in the corner) and encourage me to try harder.

I’ll never forget that incident, and wish him the best as he faces the next challenge. He was quite a guy and truly a man’s man.