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.”

While that endeavor became his dream, the path took an unusual turn for a wanna-be nitro racer. Lee went to college and graduated summa cum laude from the prestigious Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He furthered his studies by earning post-graduate degrees in business and law from Rutgers University.

His business dealings since then have culminated in ownership of the Wharton Automotive Group, which includes McLeod clutches, FTI Performance, and Silver Sport Transmissions. He continues to wheel his own NHRA nitro Funny Cars despite a major heart attack caused by a 100% arterial blockage in 2016.

In more than 125 starts in NHRA competition since 2005 — he ran the full schedules only in 2010 and ’11, and he didn’t participate during five seasons — Lee has never reached a final round. He’s been a semifinalist only once, but was the No. 1 qualifier at St. Louis in 2020. 

And based on what he learned in preseason testing at Gainesville, Florida, his car is capable of being a solid contender whenever it hits the track. Dustin Heim and Jason Bunker seem to have hit on a speedy combination heading into this week’s Gators.

“Well, we had a lot of things to test,” said Lee, whose best points showing was ninth in 2020. “We have a brand-new front half on the car, so the car is brand new. We sold all my previous Dodge Charger bodies, and updated to the late-model ones — the ones like Matt Hagan and Cruz (Pedregon) run.

"So I have that late-model body; got two of those. I bought one from Tony Stewart Racing, and I bought one from Don Schumacher. … So we had to test those, the new bodies.”

 

 

But the clutch change, he said, was the bigger challenge. Out went the five-disc clutch set-up; in came a six-disc package purchased from John Force Racing. Rain at Gainesville limited Lee’s test to six runs, but the runs were encouraging with early shutoff numbers of 3.95 and 3.97 seconds. The former number, Lee said, would’ve been a 3.88 had he stayed on the throttle to the finish line.

“The early numbers were great. The car never shook, never smoked the tires. It really hauled butt to half track,” he said. “I gave the test session a B – a B-plus, maybe – because we didn't get a chance to make full runs because we got rained out.”

The five-disc-clutch approach was “just outdated,” Lee said, because of the way NHRA is prepping the tracks for competition. 

“… The five-disc, if you want to go really fast, the five-disc is not going to hold,” he said. “I mean, it'll hold if you want to go 3.90s, but we don't want to go 3.90s, we want to go 3.80s. We want to try to win. We don't want to just be out there. That's why we went to this six-disc setup, new car, new bodies. We're ready to go race.”

Lee first went down the quarter-mile at age 17. He spent 18 years racing alcohol-fueled Funny Cars — winning the 2004 Summernationals at Englishtown — before stepping up to nitro in 2005.

“Bob Newberry, he was the most influential guy that taught me how to drive a race car, an alcohol Funny Car,” Lee said, “so I credit Bob Newberry for teaching me how to race, how to drive. And not just drive, but drive consistent, and learn how to win in (Top) Alcohol Funny Car — because a lot of guys can drive Alcohol Funny Cars, but not a lot of guys can win in an Alcohol Funny Car. … Paul Smith is the one who taught me how to drive a nitro Funny Car.”

All of that was the result of being exposed to nitro cars as a teen who hung out and raced at Englishtown and Atco.

“That was like the holy ground, man,” he said of Englishtown’s Summernationals. “Every year I would go up there and camp out all weekend; sometimes by myself, sometimes with my friends. But I never missed that race since I was in junior high” in 1974.

“I was a diehard fan. I loved Dale Armstrong, and the ‘Speed Racer’ car was one of my favorites back then. When he was running, he was doing really well. And every round at that race, I would go back and watch him work on the car. I mean, I'm talking about after first round, I was back there. After second round, and it just so happens they interviewed him before the final (a loss to Don Prudhomme), and I just happened to be back there standing. But I was outside the ropes every round at that race, watching him work on the car.

“I'm also in another (race video), too, but you can't quite make out it's me. It’s the ’82 Springnationals at Columbus. I was crewing for Al Segrini on the ‘Super Brut’ car, and you could see me standing behind the car in the final round against Frank Hawley in the ‘Chi-Town Hustler.’”

Lee said that simply being a Funny Car racer isn’t his motivation. There’s much more to it than that, he said, and it’s the same impetus that makes him a success in business.

“Competition. Flat-out competition. I'm not out there just to drive a car. I'm out there to drive a Funny Car, but also to beat somebody,” Lee said. “What I enjoy most is the competition. I want to win. I'm not out there just to go up and down the track.

“It's the same” in business, he added. “I love the competition of business. I enjoy it just as much as racing the car. I enjoy beating my competition, whether it's in business or at the racetrack.”