Paul Newman, with his wife, Joanne Woodward, stroll through the paddock area at Lime Rock Park race track in Connecticut. Left, Newman after testing his car on the track. The actor, who died last week at age 83, raced up until last year, when he won the Sports Car Club of America’s North Atlantic Road Racing Championship in the Grand Touring 1 division. His last time on the track was in August, when he took a few fast laps.

ASSOCIATED PRESS / Bob Child

There is little doubt that if Paul Newman had never been a movie star, never marketed natural foods under his own name, never established a summer camp for gravely ill children, his passing would have still warranted notice for his exploits on and off the race track.

Indeed, Newman was racing almost to the end, with his last win exactly a year ago when he took the Sports Car Club of America’s North Atlantic Road Racing Championship in the Grand Touring 1 (GT1) division.

“He was a very competitive guy as a racer,” said Skip Barber, owner and president of Lime Rock Park in Lakeville, Conn., which Newman, who lived in Westport, Conn., considered his home track. “He wanted to win and he was good.”

“It’s really rare for someone that age to be racing competitively,” said Christopher Morales, regional executive of the New York Region of the SCCA, adding that Newman changed his car number every year with his age. “If he had only raced cars, he would have died a celebrated driver.”

“It’s unbelievable,” agreed Renea Topp, marketing manager at Lime Rock, of Newman’s championship last year at the age of 82 in car Number 82. “There are not many others at his age who are not only racing but winning.”

Newman, who died last Friday at age 83, took up racing late, when he was 43. But not only did he move from amateur championships to professional wins, his racing team — Newman/Haas/Lenigan Racing — has had 107 Indy Car wins and eight championships with such top-class drivers as Mario Andretti and Nigel Mansell since it was formed in 1983.

Newman got interested in auto racing while playing the role of an Indy car driver in the 1969 movie Winning. He first raced in 1972 in a Lotus Élan at Thompson Speedway in Thompson, Conn.

“He borrowed the Lotus because he’d blown the engine of his Datsun 510 in drivers’ school,” said Craig Robertson, a former racer and Lime Rock’s statistician who was a pit worker at Thompson at the time.

He said he could not remember where Newman placed in that first race. “He did rather well, but it was a long time ago, too long ago,” he said.

Robertson said at the time Newman was more of a celebrity than a racer. “He was trying to be serious about it,” he said, adding that he was recognizable by the PLN initials on his helmet.

He earned his first SCCA national title in 1976 with another in 1979 and he was GT1 champion in 1985 and 1986 as well as 2007, according to Topp.His first professional win was an SCCA Trans-Am series event at Brainerd International Speedway, Minn., with his second Trans-Am win at Lime Rock in 1986.

In 1979, he was a member of a team that came in second in one of the biggest races of the racing year, the famed 24 Hours at Le Mans in France, according to Topp. And in 1995, he won the 24 Hours at Daytona in the Grand Touring Sport (GTS) class.

Newman last drove at Lime Rock in August when he took a few fast turns around the famed course.

“He won a lot of championships,” said Morales. “Lime Rock was his favorite track and he really moved that car around the race track. He raced against drivers 20, 30 years younger and smacked them.”

“He was a good thinking driver, never came back with a damaged car,” Morales added. “And he kept his nose clean, did not get into arguments or spats with other competitors.”

Indeed, Newman kept a low profile at the track, enjoying the camaraderie of fellow drivers and the pit crews but keeping out of the limelight.

“He hated being bothered,” said Barber. “He didn’t hide but he took himself out of public view. Most people were respectful, but there is always one guy who has to talk, has to get an autograph.”

“So long as you treated him as another driver, you got along fine, he was very friendly,” said Robertson.

“We had a hidden rule,” said Morales. “We had the information [about where Newman was racing] but we never publicized it. We kept it quiet.”

Lime Rock held a moment of silence for Newman last Saturday between races in the New York Region North Atlantic Road Racing Championship series.

“He passed away the day of his favorite race,” Morales said, adding that “the Number One pole position was held empty for the pre-race pace lap” in honor of Newman and his contribution to the sport.

Of course, Newman was a major Hollywood celebrity with one of his most recent star turns being the voice of Doc Hudson, a 1951 Hudson Hornet, in the 2006 computer animated movie Cars. At the same time, he was famous for eschewing the Hollywood scene, as well as for his line of natural food products, which he started in 1982.

And he was a major philanthropist, giving some $250 million in all the profits from his food line to charity since the early 1980s.

In 1988, he founded the “Hole in the Wall Gang” camps for children with serious and life-threatening illnesses. There is now an association of similar camps across the United States and around the world, including a NASCAR racing themed camp, Victory Junction Gang Camp, in North Carolina, “He was not just a good race driver,” said Barber. “He was a good guy.”

pelsworth@projo.com