Paul Newman had few equals as both an actor and a driver – so it makes sense the voice of Doc Hudson in Cars was a star racer himself.
The Hollywood icon won an Oscar, a BAFTA award, and three Golden Globes but one of his most prized trophies wasn’t won on stage.
The Rolex Daytona was named after the Daytona International Speedway where the luxury designer became the official timekeeper.
Designed with race car drivers in mind, the first series had an unusual ‘exotic’ dial design once dubbed the ‘Paul Newman’ during the 1980s.
The Butch Cassidy actor, who has been dubbed the original influencer, was synonymous with the wrist piece.
Where Steve McQueen had his motorcycle and James Dean had his red jacket, Newman was gifted a Rolex Daytona by his wife.
Actress Joanne Woodward had the watch engraved with the message ‘Drive Carefully Me’ to reflect her concern for his love of speed.
Newman’s enthusiasm for motorsport had exploded following the pair’s collaboration on the 1969 film Winning – about a driver who risks losing his wife over his obsession with the Indianapolis 500.
“She thinks it’s the silliest thing in the world,” Newman said. “It’s also very scary to her, and she doesn’t much care for it.”
The Rolex Daytona watch was gifted partially to show Woodward’s support for her husband as he started his racing adventure at 43.
Newman, who was nominated for an Oscar in five separate decades, once claimed racing ‘was the first thing that I ever found I had any grace in’.
He went on to place second at Le Mans in 1979 and sped his way to four USA National Championships.
Newman was also a championship team owner fronted by Mario Andretti and he even managed to lure British F1 champion Nigel Mansell to the Newman/Haas IndyCar team.
Incredibly, he was still behind the wheel at 70 when he competed in the 1995 Daytona 24 Hours.
The veteran had been struggling to get out of the Ford Mustang he was driving in and so insisted his teammates manhandle him out of the car during pitstops to save seconds.
One of his co-drivers Tommy Kendall told Motorsport magazine: “Paul felt like he was slowing up the driver changes and told us to grab him by the epaulettes and drag him out.
“I was thinking, he’s 70 years old and a national treasure, I can’t do that! But he was adamant. It showed how competitive he was
“It showed how competitive he was, that he wasn’t there just to make up the numbers, and that he wanted to be treated as one of us.”
Newman drove the Mustang to the lead in the fifth hour, and the No.70 car finished third overall and won the GTS class by 27 laps.
Fittingly, the race played out like a Hollywood script.
Jack Roush recalled Newman telling him, “I’m done,” after getting out of his Roush-prepared Ford Mustang with four hours remaining.
“I said, ‘No Paul, this is your race car, you’ve got to be in it for the last hour when we finish’”, as noted by the Daytona Beach News-Journal.
“So he reached down and did something that an American hero would do, and got back in the car for the last hour.”
As an added prize for his victory, Newman was gifted an incredibly special reference 16520 ‘Zenith’ Daytona, with a personal engraving.
Meanwhile, his original Daytona from his wife had long since been gifted to James Cox, who dated the power couple’s daughter, Nell.
“Paul asked me what time it was, to set his watch. I replied, ‘I don’t know — I don’t have a watch.’ He was clearly surprised. So he said, ‘Here, here’s a watch. If you wind it, it tells pretty good time,’” Cox told the Wall Street Journal.
“At that time, I knew Rolex was an amazing brand, but I had no idea how significant the watch was.”
At the time, the watch was selling for about $200 – that appreciated by over 88,000 per cent when it fetched a record-breaking $17.75 million at a charity auction in 2017.
A figure worthy of the legacy left by Piston Cup legend Doc Hudson…
