Paul
Goldsmith

Paul Goldsmith was born on 2 October 1925 in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and moved with his family to Detroit while still young. He began racing motorcycles in 1946, always on Harley-Davidsons, and won the Daytona 200 in 1953. From 1950 he also entered car races, and in 1956 he joined the NASCAR Grand National series, driving for Smokey Yunick. In 1958 he won the last Grand National race held on the Daytona Beach road course, in a Pontiac. He is the only driver to have won there on both a motorcycle and in a stock car.

Soon after that win he left NASCAR to race in the Indianapolis 500. That race counted towards the Formula 1 World Championship from 1950 to 1960, which made Goldsmith an Indy 500 driver with world championship starts. He took part in three championship rounds, all at Indianapolis: in a Kurtis Kraft in 1958, and in an Epperly in 1959 and 1960. He finished fifth in 1959, which left him 17th in the standings. In 1960 he took third place, a podium finish, and ended the championship 15th. He never won a race or took a pole position in Formula 1.

In USAC stock car racing, Goldsmith won the national championship in 1961 and 1962 in a Pontiac run by Ray Nichels. After he started a NASCAR race at Riverside at the end of 1963, USAC suspended him for a year. He returned to the series in 1965. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2016.

Source: Wikipedia, “Paul Goldsmith (racing driver)”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.