Paul Goldsmith, winner of last premier-series race on Daytona Beach, dies at 98

Paul Goldsmith, who was as richly talented when racing stock cars as he was riding motorcycles, has died. He was 98.

Goldsmith won the last NASCAR premier-series race held on the Daytona Beach and road course in 1958. He also won the prestigious Daytona 200 motorcycle race in 1953, one of his five American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) national victories. The versatile Goldsmith also made six starts in the Indianapolis 500, finishing fifth in 1959 and a career-best third the following year.

Goldsmith notched nine wins and eight pole positions in what is now the NASCAR Cup Series. His success came primarily while connected to two legendary car owners — Smokey Yunick and Ray Nichels. It was Yunick — who ran the legendary “Best Damn Garage in Town” in Daytona Beach — who connected with him during Daytona’s motorcycle events and entered him in his first NASCAR races in 1956.

Goldsmith netted his first win in his eighth premier-series start that year, prevailing in an epic 300-miler to tame the dangerous and famed Langhorne Speedway in Pennsylvania. He had the rare distinction of also winning a motorcycle event at the circular Langhorne track.

“Paul Goldsmith had more natural talent than any driver I ever had anything to do with,” Yunick was quoted as saying in Peter Golenbock’s 1993 book, American Zoom. “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.”

Goldsmith was born in Parkersburg, West Virginia, but moved with his family to Detroit during his teenage years. His motorcycle racing career began there, and he soon graduated from the barnstorming county-fair circuit to the AMA grand national ranks.

In AMA competition, Goldsmith recorded his first national win at the Milwaukee Mile in 1952. A year later, he netted his largest two-wheel triumph in the Daytona 200, ending a 13-year drought for Harley-Davidson in the event, riding a bike prepared in part by Yunick. Goldsmith balanced his racing career with a full-time job at the Chrysler factory in Detroit.

“I guess I was pretty businesslike compared to a lot of the guys back then,” Goldsmith told the AMA in his later years. “There was very little glamour in racing in those days. We all slept in our cars. It was tough, but we all had a great time as well.”

His distinction as the final winner on the Daytona shores and road circuit signaled the end of an era, with the 2.5-mile Daytona International Speedway the next year in 1959. Goldsmith led all 39 laps from the pole position in Yunick’s No. 3 Pontiac, but he fought off intense pressure from Hall of Famer Curtis Turner to win by five car lengths.

“It was difficult to get a car set up for both the beach and the highway,” Goldsmith told Autoweek in 2021. “And the highway was rough. The car wouldn‘t handle unless you had the right suspension. Smokey helped me with that quite a bit. We went out on a back road there about four miles north of Daytona and worked on different shocks, tire pressures and suspensions. That‘s where we learned how to do it. And I had raced motorcycles there, so that helped.”

Goldsmith also claimed 26 victories in the U.S. Auto Club (USAC) Stock Car Championship, a rival series to NASCAR’s top division. He was the series’ champion in consecutive years — 1961-62 — but later challenged USAC in court for rules that barred drivers from alternating between the two sanctioning bodies.

Though Goldsmith listed St. Clair Shores, Michigan as his hometown during his racing career and later lived in Indiana, he briefly claimed residence in Mexico City as a way to exploit a loophole in American auto racing bylaws, which relaxed suspensions against international drivers.

His focus shifted more toward NASCAR in 1964 through his partnership with Nichels. Goldsmith claimed his final three NASCAR Cup Series wins in the 1966 season — claiming a victory in a Daytona 500 qualifying race (which counted as an official win during that time), then prevailing at Rockingham and Bristol. He never competed in more than half of the races during a given season, but the 1966 campaign brought his highest finish in the final standings — fifth.

By 1969, Goldsmith had begun to grow weary of the demands of the racing circuit, telling the great Benny Phillips of the High Point (North Carolina) Enterprise in August that he intended to phase himself out of the cockpit. “I can’t simply say I’m quitting,” he said. “If I was quitting outright, I’d be off to some island resort instead of hanging around these race tracks. But I’ll put it this way, you’ll see me at fewer and fewer races in the future.”

One week later, Goldsmith competed in his final race. The engine of his No. 99 Dodge expired just minutes after he had taken the lead at Michigan International Speedway. “I’d just got tired of it, the traveling, being home two days a week if I was lucky,” Goldsmith told the Munster (Indiana) Times in 1998. “I was leading in that race, the engine blew and I said this is the last engine I’m gonna blow, and I quit.”

As a footnote to Goldsmith’s retirement, Nichels tapped Charlie Glotzbach as his successor. In the next race Nichels entered, Glotzbach joined the driver boycott of the inaugural Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway. Nichels replaced Glotzbach with Richard Brickhouse, who claimed the first Talladega 500 in the No. 99 entry for his only big-league win.

Goldsmith filed to make his retirement official on Jan. 11, 1970, taking a front-office position as general manager of Nichels’ engineering group. He also left a legacy of innovation, credited with developing the water-circulating forerunner to the modern cool-suit technology and also an experimental warning system that featured a flashing caution light inside his race car.

His post-racing career was filled with numerous business interests, including a concentration on aviation. Goldsmith — known as one of the first drivers to fly his own private plane to each race — founded an aircraft engine business, trained pilots and owned a small airport in Griffith, Indiana. He also owned several Burger King franchises in the Indianapolis area and two Thoroughbred horse ranches in Florida.

Goldsmith returned to the shores of Daytona for a promotional appearance in August 2020, reuniting with one of his former cars on the beach and taking a lap around the 2.5-mile track with then-Daytona track president Chip Wile behind the wheel.

“He’s run at Indy. He drove for Smokey, who thought Goldsmith was the best driver he ever had because he knew more about a car than anybody,” said NASCAR historian Buz McKim. “He was a natural engineer. He is an aviator and raced Pikes Peak. Literally, anything with wheels and an engine, he was in to win.”

Goldsmith was recognized by induction into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1999, the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2008 and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame in 2016.