Race Reports

 

Jason and Paul Lee dive into the business of drag racing including an in-depth look into the path he chose in business to allow himself the opportunity to race at the highest level in the sport.

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Drag racing is a sport not just won on the track.

It is not just won in the pit area or back home at the shop. Success in drag racing starts behind closed doors with handshakes, signed agreements, and mutual understanding.

The fact of the matter is the best racers in the world don’t get where they are on skill alone. It takes savvy marketing men and women, successful public relations and relationships with the right people and businesses to turn driver skill into actual round wins.

Paul Lee knows that fact perhaps better than most.

A longtime racer and savvy businessman himself, who owns his own Paul Lee Racing operation alongside a trio of companies under the Wharton Automotive Group, which includes McLeod Racing, FTI Performance and Silver Sport Transmissions, Lee knows that to take his operation
to the next level, he needs the right people by his side.

“I am passionate for this sport,” a confident Lee said. “I’ve loved it since I was a little kid and I am still that little kid today almost 50 years later. This has not been an overnight thing. I’ve been working toward this since I was 13 years old. The lifetime commitment that I’ve made to doing what we are doing is something I am proud of, but I hope for more and that is what we are out here doing now.”

Lee recently paired with industry executive Steven Cole and added savvy marketing person, Top Fuel driver and team owner Krista Baldwin to the Paul Lee Racing team. Baldwin, who not only drives the McLeod-sponsored dragster, but is also the Creative Director for the Wharton Automotive Group, helps take this race team from a single-car operation to a hopeful megateam in the making. Lee hopes marketing a pair of cars from each of the premier nitro categories within the NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series is the next step in the team’s progression.

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Competition Plus - Few racers have traveled a path like Paul Lee’s.

Lee was a teen-aged spectator at Old Bridge Raceway Park in Englishtown, New Jersey, when a TV camera captured him in the pits observing driver/tuner Dale Armstrong servicing the “Speed Racer” Funny Car between rounds.

A year later, Lee was turning wrenches on a nitro-burning Funny Car driven by Al Segrini. 

Almost 50 years down the road, Lee is a highly successful businessman who believes he’s on the cusp of his best season yet as a Funny Car owner and driver. Lee enters this week’s NHRA season-opening Gatornationals with newer Dodge bodies, a new clutch package, and his first full season with Dustin Heim and Jason Bunker serving as co-crew chiefs. 

A native of Ewan, New Jersey, Lee is living his dream as a Funny Car competitor.

“Funny Cars have always been my favorite since I saw “Jungle” Jim (Lieberman) and I was 13 years old at Atco Dragway,” said Lee, who now calls Orange, California, home. “I went to Atco Dragway with some friends to watch the nitro Funny Car show. ‘Jungle Jim’ was the first one up, and he did this full-track burnout. Backed up 50, 70 miles an hour — who knows how much? Went off into the grass, because there was no wall at Atco Driveway back in those days, it was just grass. He went off into the grass. Flames were high. It was at nighttime, and he never lifted. Got back on the track, and beat the guy in the other lane.

“I just remember the crowd just going nuts. Right then, when I saw ‘Jungle Jim,’ he was my all-time hero. And it was like when I saw that — first time I ever saw a nitro Funny Car — I was like, ‘That's what I want to do.’ I knew, from that moment, my whole life would be dedicated to being a Funny Car driver. That's all I've ever wanted to do since that moment, when I was 13 years old at Atco Dragway.”

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