Norfolk native part of a new book featuring Newman the car racer

By Lloyd Garrison
There is a side of Paul Newman that most fans of his many films don’t know – the accomplished race car driver and team owner who raced into his eighties before dying of cancer 16 months ago. It is a life that Norfolk’s Larry Leifert knew well, especially in Newman’s later years, when Leifert served as Newman’s crew chief and engine guru.
The full story of Newman’s racing career has now been told in a new book called “Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman,” written by Matt Stone. It is a lavishly illustrated coffee table-size volume that begins with Newman’s decision to begin racing at 47, when most professionals are ready to retire. It goes on to chronicle a career that included four national Trans Am championships and class wins at Le Mans and Daytona.
Leifert is one of the book’s numerous contributors whose first person accounts tell what it was like working with Newman. Others include such racing luminaries as Mario Andretti, who wrote the forward.
Leifert, who runs a engine repair shop in Torrington, is highly regarded on the eastern racing circuit as a successful designer, builder and fine tuner of race car engines. He first met Newman when their paths crossed at the track at Lime Rock in Falls Village in the early 1980’s.
Leifert’s account in “Winning” begins with this excerpt: “Even at his age, he could do things that would scare you on the racetrack. Sometimes, after a session, he would sit in his car – just sit there for half an hour and become part of the car, you know what I mean? The guy was so serious about racing. I thought he’d like to go out and have some fun and maybe once in a while go to a national race. But he wanted to win everything. He was somebody who expected more of himself than he did of anybody else.”
Leifert was crew chief when Newman entered his last race at Lime Rock on Sept. 29, 2007. As related in “Winning,” it was a sunny fall afternoon as Newman, driving a red, white and blue Corvette, completed the 25 minute sprint race in 23 minutes, 36.54 seconds with a best average lap speed of 101.02 miles per hour. He was 82, and he won.
Only a few days short of one year later, he died at 83 in his home in Westport, Conn.
“He loved to have fun,” Leifert recalls in “Winning.” “Any time he had a good time, everybody had a good time. He really didn’t want to be a movie star. He wanted to be one of us. He’d go into the sleaziest bar with us. It didn’t matter where it was. He knew we wouldn’t let anything happen to him. And nobody knew who the hell he was when he was hanging around with us.”

Photo By Lloyd Garrison