Eight years ago, Paul Lee felt like he was on the top of his racing world. Then, it all came crashing down through no fault of his own. Sunday, at the NHRA Northwest Nationals, Lee returned to where he was before things went awry.

Lee reached his first career nitro Funny Car final round at Pacific Raceways, just outside Seattle. In one day, he nearly equaled his round-win total for the season.

“Not bad day at the races,” Lee said, shortly after coming up short against winner Austin Prock. “One short, but we’re happy. Austin [and] Jimmy Prock are so far ahead of everybody. We were happy to made it to the final and give them a little bit of a run.”

Lee, his rookie tuner Jonnie Lindberg, and semi-retired tuning legend John Medlen were looking to give the much higher-funded John Force Racing's Austin Prock a run for his money. They had put a tune-up in Lee’s McLeod Funny Car and hoped it would run a 3.87 or somewhere in the area. 

Lee’s Funny Car went up in smoke shortly after the hit, but it hardly mattered. Lee said he always comes to the line to win, but somehow, he knew he’d already won and didn’t need a win light to validate his feelings.

“It would have been a close race,” Lee added.

This is the story of Lee’s persistence in overcoming a life tragedy and climbing to where he dreamed he would be. 

A successful businessman, Lee was about to embark on a racing chapter he’d dreamed about since he was a kid watching the nitro cars run at Atco, New Jersey, and across the way in Englishtown. 

Lee had committed to running a Funny Car under the Kalitta Motorsports banner, and on December 13th, 2016, the plan came undone. He faced the biggest challenge of his life.

“I had just committed to running a Funny Car with the Kalittas in 2017, and right after the PRI Show, I had my heart attack,” Lee said. “So that canceled all the 2017 plans. So that all went away. Then through rehab, it took me a couple of years and then back in 2019, a couple of years, then I put together my own team.”

Please understand the kind of heart attack Lee experienced; most people don’t come back from, much less drive an 11,000 horsepower Funny Car again. 

Lee suffered a “widowmaker,” also known as a myocardial infarction, which occurs when the left anterior descending (LAD) artery, the largest coronary artery in the heart, is blocked. The LAD supplies about 50% of the heart muscle’s blood supply, so when it’s blocked, oxygen-rich blood can’t move through the heart, which can lead to abnormal heart rhythm or cardiac arrest. This type of heart attack is immediately life-threatening and has a high risk of being fatal, which gives it its name.

Only 12 percent of victims survive. 

Less than that number of part-time nitro teams reach a final round as Lee did. 
 

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Lee’s efforts were reasonable from 2019, but his program made a quantum leap towards the middle of 2023 when he brought in Medlen to serve as an advisor, much like the example established by Lee Beard when he stepped up to help Cruz Pedregon. 

Then, in 2024, the program went into high gear as Lee hired unproven nitro tuner Jonnie Lindberg to serve as crew chief and work under Medlen’s mentorship.

Lindberg and Medlen began to carve out a plan that included improving the team’s qualifying efforts.  

Lee has qualified in the top half of the field in seven of the nine events it has attended. Five of those efforts have been in the top five. 

On Friday night at the NHRA Northwest Nationals, Lee went to third provisionally on the strength of a 3.917 elapsed time at 327.03 miles per hour. 

"It’s all about the people, right? Lee added. "I mean, we’ve had a couple different crew chiefs since 2019 when we put this deal together, we’ve had different personnel. Then this year it’s kind of come together with Jonnie Lindberg and John Medlin. Putting them together was the best thing I ever did because those guys work great together. Jonnie Lindberg’s been a crew chief for six months and we’re already in the finals and qualifying good."

From the day he hired Linberg, Lee knew he'd be a difference-maker.

"He wanted to be a crew chief in nitro cars," Lee said. "He’s a multi-time world champion in alcohol. I got to know him and saw how smart he was. He’s an old-school racer. He might be 35 years old, but he’s an old-school racer, and that’s what attracted me. The way he thinks, he’s old school."

When Lee first approached Medlen on the idea of pairing the two together, the look on the veteran tuner's face told him all he needed to know.

“That’s a perfect choice,” Medlen confirmed. “I’ll help him. I’ll teach him.” 

Medlen was the perfect piece to the puzzle, and Lindberg was just the icing on the cake. 

"I saw Jonnie was smart," Lee confirmed. "I’ve known him for a long time, and I could see how smart he was, and I said, 'This guy could do it.” 

"And me, I’m a businessman; I like to give people chances. I could give this guy a chance. Sure, I don’t mind that. I like giving young guys a chance, a shot. I like giving people... And not just with the race team, but also in business too."

Lee admits he was out of touch with the final rounds ahead of him, especially the one where unheralded Chase Van Sant eliminated very much heralded Gaige Herrera. 

"I didn’t even see it," Lee admitted. "We were so late getting up there. We didn’t get up there until after Pro Stock had already run and motorcycles. So we didn’t know what was going on there. We were just scrambling to try to get up there on time. Because we knew it was a Fox Live show."

No matter the rush, Lee and his team had a plan. 

"We knew they had a performance advantage, and we had gone down the track every time, and you got to go down the track to win a race," Lee said. "And we didn’t have any breaks all year, and finally today, we got some breaks and went down the track. Jonnie raced the track and raced the opponent. This is what we need to run to beat this opponent and that’s what we did. He tried to step it up in the final, but it just didn’t hold."

 

 

Lee is no stranger to reaching the final round. Three times in his Top Alcohol Funny Car career, he won races. 

"I’ve been doing this a long time," Lee said. "I was totally calm in the final. I just wanted to win. That’s what we’re here for. I thought I’d do the best job. I knew he had the performance advantage, so I tucked it in in the final round and did what we could do. We did the best we could."

Lee comes to race the events, not considering the chances of a championship run. Headed into Seattle, he's in a battle with another part-time team [Blake Alexander] for the tenth and final spot in the Countdown to the Championship points. 

NHRA rules permit teams that merely show up at all races to claim a spot in the Countdown as a participation trophy element to their playoff system. Meanwhile, Lee's team will need to earn their way in.

Lee scored a monumental victory in the semi-finals over Alexander and tied Alexis DeJoria for ninth place. 

On Sunday, Lee's final round appearance confirmed that his team was on the right path. 

"We’ve qualified well all season, but we just haven’t had any other race day luck at all. You always need a little bit of luck," Lee explained. "We’d had situations where we were second low ET or third low ET during the first round and come up short at the finish line. If we raced anybody else, we’d have won. You just need some of that luck. 

"Today, we had it. Qualifying No. 3 gives you choices. We chose to be the second pair, and we went out there and made our run. And then there was a lot of drama that happened. It was a two-hour round, but we got to do our round and got back to service the car. All that matters. When you qualify well, you get choices."

Lee made the most of his time on Sunday and this season in life.