PAUL NEWMAN1925-2008.(NEWS)(Obituary)

Byline: MARK VAUGHN

HE WAS A RACER who supported his racing habit by acting. That's how he would have wanted to be remembered. Racer/actor/philanthropist Paul Newman, who succeeded in all three fields, died Oct. 26 after a long battle with cancer. He was 83.

He came to racing late in life, driving his first race car in his 40s. Bob Bondurant trained him to drive for the 1969 film Winning at the then-new Bon-durant School, which used Datsun 510s, Datsun roadsters and a Formula Vee at Orange County International Raceway in California. Newman was the school's fourth student.

Newman fell in love with driving from the start. "The first thing that I ever found I had any grace in, he once said.

He would race the rest of his life. Many of his first rides were in Datsuns prepared by Bob Sharp, an accomplished racer who became a Datsun dealer in 1969. One of his earliest rides was a Bob Sharp Datsun 510 in SCCA B Produc-tion. He piloted BSR Zs, too.

"We spent a lot of Tuesdays up at Lime Rock with him following my line and me following him, recalled Sharp. "He wanted a Z car, but I put him in a 510 sedan instead. I thought he'd learn more in a less-powerful car.

His first race win likely was in one of those 510s, though an early win is listed in a Lotus Elan in Thompson, Conn., in 1972. He co-drove a Porsche 935 at Le Mans in 1979 with Dick Barbour and Rolf Stom-melen to first place in the IMSA class and ...