Newman's Own Fire Escape
Cool Hand Luke managed to avoid being toasted over the weekend.
Paul Newman escaped uninjured from his burning race car at Daytona International Speedway over the weekend.
Newman, a longtime competitor in the auto-racing world, was road-testing a Daytona prototype sports car on Saturday for next month's Rolex 24 race when the vehicle spun out of control on the famed Florida track. Although the vehicle came to rest without colliding with anything, once the Oscar winner tried restarting the racer, the car's engine ignited and caught fire.
The 79-year-old star hustled out unscathed while emergency crews doused the mini-inferno, which was apparently limited to the engine compartment.
The Oscar winning icon, known for such classics as The Hustler, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting and Cool Hand Luke, was taken to the speedway's infield medical center as a precaution and released after a brief check-up. He then returned to the track to watch one of his drivers, Sebastian Bourdais, test another race car.
"I don't know what happened," Newman told the Associated Press. "I'm fine. It just caught on fire somehow."
"Knowing Paul, I doubt if this changes his plans to race in the Rolex 24 at Daytona," said Grand American Series spokesperson Adam Saal.
Newman first got the racing bug while shooting the 1968 movie Winning. He has become an accomplished driver, notching a victory in the GTS class in the 1995 Rolex 24 and claiming four championships in Sports Car Club of America competition under his belt.
Aside from racing, Newman also moonlights as a businessman, famously overseeing his Newman's Own line of pasta sauces, salad dressings and snacks, with a portion of profits benefiting children's charities.
Not that's he's ready to abandon his acting career. Newman, who last appeared on the big screen in 2002's The Road to Perdition, has two projects in the pipeline: the HBO TV movie Empire Falls, due to air in May, and, appropriately enough, Disney-Pixar's racing-themed 'toon Cars, slated for a June 2006 release.
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