Paul Goldsmith, the last driver to win a race at the Daytona Beach and Road course preceding Daytona International Speedway, passed away on Friday at 98 years old. Goldsmith raced for 13 years in the NASCAR Cup Series, in addition to stints in Formula One and USAC Champ Car Series.
The Daytona Beach and Road Course began holding auto races in 1902, and continued to do so until 1958. It combined portions of SR-A1A with a stretch of beach sand running parallel, forming a multi-surface race course that paved the way for the city’s rich history of racing. The year after it ceased operations, Daytona International Speedway held the inaugural Daytona 500 in 1959.
In the final competition there in 1958, Goldsmith started from the pole position and led all 39 laps around the course. He bested a who’s who of NASCAR pioneers including Lee Petty, Buck Baker, Fireball Roberts, and Joe Weatherly. His triumph was backed by a local engine builder by the name of Smokey Yunick, whose storied ‘Best Damn Garage in Town’ stood near the border of Daytona Beach and Ormond Beach.
Goldsmith won nine times in his NASCAR career, with a best championship finish of fifth in 1966. He continued to race on and off in different circuits until 1993, when he ran a final exhibition race in Indianapolis. “Paul Goldsmith had more natural talent than any driver I ever had anything to do with,” Yunick once said of Goldsmith. “He’s a very, very quiet, likable guy…good manners. A very, very fast race driver and had extremely quick reflexes. Inside of three or four races, he was as good as there was.”
Among his many career accomplishments, Goldsmith is one of 55 drivers who have run both the Daytona 500 and Indianapolis 500 in their careers. His diversity in being able to compete in both stock car racing and open wheel racing is an increasingly rare combination, making Goldsmith one of the final members of a dying breed.
Alongside his car-racing career, Goldsmith was a lifelong aviation enthusiast. He flew planes himself, and once owned an airport in Indiana. Born in West Virginia and raised in Michigan, he was racing motorcycles in the Midwest from when he was a teenager, succeeding in that as he did at seemingly every discipline of transportation he tried. He is a member of the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America, Motorcycle Hall of Fame, USAC Hall of Fame, Michigan Motorsports Hall of Fame, and Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame. He is survived by one daughter, Linda, and had a wife, Helen, and son, Greg, who have both already passed.
