IT was a movie role that led to the other great passion in Paul Newman’s life: motor racing. He started out driving around a car park and went on to take second place in the gruelling Le Mans 24-hour race at the age of 54.

Newman caught the bug when he was cast as a racing driver in the 1969

film Winning. How fitting that his last cinematic role was as the voice of Doc Hudson, the veteran racing car who has retired to Radiator Springs in the 2006 animated film Cars.

Newman said: “I just decided one day, why not do it? . . . I can’t be competitive about acting, because there’s no way to compete as an actor. What are you competing against?

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Of all the actors now at work in Hollywood he is the only one to mark every film he is in decisively with his own personality

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“In auto racing, either you win or you lose. You go across the finish line and come in first or second or ninth — or not at all.”

He started at the bottom, driving a saloon car. In 1976 he won his first national amateur championship. In 1977 he began competing against professionals.

Two years later he was speeding around Le Mans in a Porsche 935 at up to 220mph. He and his two co-drivers almost won when the lead car developed fuel injection problems. Then their own car’s engine began to splutter and they limped across the line in second place at 5mph.

Once a spectator spotted him rubbing ice cubes on his racing gloves to stiffen the leather and yelled: “So that’s why they call you Cool Hand Luke.” It became one of Newman’s favourite anecdotes.

In the 1980s he won two more national championships before retiring to run a racing team whose drivers included Nigel Mansell, the British former Formula One champion.

He put on his driving gloves once again a few weeks after his 70th birthday and, with three crew members, drove a Ford Mustang to victory in their class and to third place overall in the 24-hour endurance race at Daytona Beach. He was the oldest person to win the event.

Ron Dennis, head of the McLaren F1 team, said in Singapore last night ahead of today’s grand prix: “He was a fine driver who was famous in Hollywood for doing his own stunt driving as often as not.”

Carl Haas, Newman’s former racing-team partner, said: “His pure joy at winning a pole position or winning a race exemplified the spirit he brought to his life and to all those that knew him.”

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