Hoseheads Sprint Car Photos & News

Paul Hazen

Hall of Fame - Elected to the Hoosier Auto Racing Fan Club Hall of Fame in January of 2008, Paul still looks like he can’t believe it. (Dave Gansert photo)

Having Fun – Seen here with A.J. Anderson, Paul’s relationships with his drivers always appear positive. (Dave Merritt photo)

Kokomo 1989 – A victory lane shot with Tony and Paul from what seems like a long time ago. (Jim Fisher photo)

The Little Guy

The game has changed. Good or bad, you name the sport and over time, each contest has managed to evolve.

In the last three decades, stick and ball activities have been revolutionized by technology, science, and safety, where setting new standards of excellence has become as common as Indiana cornfields. Because of these advancements, it’s safe to say that the style of play in any sport is vastly different these days as opposed to thirty years prior.

On the flip-side, modern chemistry and eight-figure annual salaries have negatively altered professional athletics, artificially adding muscular mass and raising red flags with such superhuman performance, often questioning the integrity of each organization and participant as well when those excessive contract figures are announced.

Auto racing and more specifically, short track open wheel racing, has changed a bunch in the same timeframe and again, technology, science, and safety have had their impact, allowing for record-breaking runs, dominant seasons, and drivers walking away from vicious crashes. That’s the good stuff.

Backing It In – Paul backs his 1937 Ford into one of Warsaw’s corners on May 28, 1960. (Paul Hazen photo)

Any Tom, Dick, or Harry cannot simply plop down a wad of cash and catch passes from Peyton Manning or suit up for the Pacers and that’s where the sport of sprint car racing differs from stick and ball. If someone decides they want to squander their family fortune and has the guts to risk life and limb, then they can immediately purchase the necessary equipment; fed to a pack of wolves when jousting wheel to wheel with the best in the business.

And over the last two decades, more money has entered sprint and midget car racing primarily because the fathers of teenage talent want to send their kids down the same path to stardom as open wheel graduates Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Mike Bliss, Kenny Irwin, Jason Leffler, Ryan Newman, and Kasey Kahne. As a result of such emulation, car counts and the quality of competition has increased exponentially but as expected, there’s a serious negative that outweighs such positives: the almighty dollar of those chasing that bigger pot of gold has effectively driven out teams with smaller budgets, giving up in their quest to simply survive on the lower end of the food chain.

Campaigning a sprint car has never been a cheap exercise, but when the costs to remain competitive double or triple, the little guy must perform a reality-check and often times those extra expenditures cannot be justified. Racing may be a way of life for many, but it does not rate as an absolute necessity.

Over time, this sport has seen so many drivers and teams come and go, so hard to stay on top or let alone, in the game. The insane schedule of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights from April through October, the endless maintenance, the constant uphill battle to break even, you name the reason and burnout can ensue at any point. Sprint car participation in a given decade is like a revolving door. One guy might leave, but you can usually find someone else who gets bitten by the bug and goes full-bore.

If possible, wouldn’t it be cool to take a spin in a time machine and experience the camaraderie and intensity of a Kokomo, Indiana sprint car pit area in 1970? I can just imagine those bold, blue-collar men rolling up their sleeves, trying to squeeze more speed from their unique creations, unafraid to duke it out over an on-track squabble but forgetting about it afterwards when sharing beers and laughs. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

Champs – Paul Hazen (far right) and his driver Jim Elliott (wearing the patch) collect Warsaw Speedway championship hardware after the 1972 season.

These days, almost like a crowded city of skyscrapers, the northwestern horizon of the Kokomo Speedway property is dominated by massive semi-sized tow rigs attached to spacious stacker trailers. The best equipment that money can buy is just a phone call and credit card number away. And those men who once rolled up their sleeves to get dirty and confront their opponent have been replaced by teenagers, some not old enough to shave or hold a valid driver’s license, preferring to keep their suits clean by playing with their cell phones rather than grooving a tire or changing a torsion bar. Fighting or sticking around afterwards for a beer? Well, many of today’s racers are not of age or they have to head home, as the school bell rings the next morning. 2010 and 1970 couldn’t be more different if you ask me.

Even with all of the changes, one thing has remained constant. For the last forty-two years, a sprint car tail tank wearing the number 57 has populated an Indiana sprint car pit area. If you’ve been around the scene for any time whatsoever, you’d know that familiar number 57 belongs to Columbia City, Indiana’s Paul Hazen.

Talk about being bitten by the bug, that’s Hazen for you. Standing the test of time, weathering the winds of change, or whatever trite saying you wish to insert, Paul has seen it and endured it, figuring out a way to survive such stormy conditions and enjoy the activity for its most basic element – trying to outsmart and go faster than his competition.

Forever of modest means, he started with a $500 1937 Ford all the way back in 1957, still a teenager who was extremely eager to satisfy his need for speed. Graduating from stock cars to modifieds, he would eventually claim a Warsaw Speedway track championship as a driver in 1965. But, ten years from those humble beginnings, a back injury (from a horrific racing accident) and work demands made his cherished hobby a chore, forcing him to evaluate his substantial investments in time and money.

His solution: make the leap to the sprint car ranks and hire someone else to handle the driving duties. And much like Tony Stewart has done with his World of Outlaw teams of today, if you can’t beat the best; you go out and hire them. The only thing is, Paul did it forty years prior to Tony. Been there, done that.

Victory Lap – September 12th, 1959. Paul wins the fourth heat at Warsaw. (Paul Hazen photo)

Local stalwart Jim Elliott joined forces with Hazen and except for when fellow heavyweight Don Walker would find a way to win, it would not be uncommon for the Elliott and Hazen combination to make a mockery of Warsaw’s Saturday night proceedings. Fast time, trophy dash, fast heat, and the feature victory, such a clean sweep became an old habit for car 57, scoring second place in the points in 1968 and 1969, later tallying a trio of championships from 1970 through 1972. Kosciusko County domination was an understatement for Hazen and Elliott and some of Paul’s relatives even had the nerve to suggest letting up and allowing someone else to sample success.

With a bucket of Penguin Point chicken going to Warsaw’s quickest qualifier, it literally became a Sunday afternoon tradition for Jim’s wife Sue to prepare some side dishes to go along with that fried chicken, inviting Paul over to the house for lunch and a Winona Lake pontoon boat excursion before strolling south to Kokomo for Sunday night action.

The loss of Jim’s eye to a Bryan, Ohio rock in October of 1971 couldn’t even slow them down. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end as Jim would tragically lose his life in March of 1973, straddling his 750 cc Honda motorcycle when contacted by a woman who ran a yield sign. In the prime of his career, who knows how many more wins and championships the Elliott/Hazen partnership could have produced?

Three Wheels – A.J. Anderson lifts the left front at Lawrenceburg in April of 2007. (Randy Jones photo)

With fellow combatants Ray Kenens (senior), Rocky Fisher (soon to be a Hazen driver), and Don Walker serving as pall bearers, Jim was laid to rest in Oakwood Cemetery, where today you can still see his gravestone bearing an accurate depiction of Hazen’s 57 sprinting into the sunset. Racers always coming to the rescue of their tight-knit fraternity, it was rather fitting to learn that the funds for the gravestone were collected from a Warsaw crowd.

Pressing on regardless, Paul would eventually hire Louie Mann and the two would claim yet another Warsaw championship in ’73, reuniting some six seasons later for a similar feat. As you will learn from reading, even back then Hazen would never burn a bridge with a driver, choosing to remain friends and rehire countless chauffeurs for additional tours of duty.

Fast forward to 1981 and after impressing with some solid runs in his own equipment, Hazen finally gave in to the insistence of Jim’s twenty year old son Tony and invited him to get behind the wheel. Jim and Paul’s potency was already legendary in northern Indiana but the pairing with Tony proved even more effective, winning right off the bat and claiming at least eight track championships at Warsaw, Gas City, and Kokomo, not to mention countless feature victories against the stiffest of competition, including that of the United States Auto Club. Their initial USAC score was televised live to the world on ESPN’s Thursday Night Thunder at Hinsdale, Illinois, with Tony shocking reigning champ Steve Butler in a dramatic photo finish. Going their separate ways late in the ’89 season, Elliott and Hazen would successfully reunite several times in the early to mid-1990s, still remaining friends to this day.

Loyalty and sticking with what you know have always been big with Paul. Just ask his engine builder Dick Kercher, who he’s done business with since 1969. Some marriages don’t last that long, although Paul’s been faithfully devoted to his wife Delores for some 51 years. Entering his seventh decade of local Indiana auto racing, it’s hard to imagine him doing anything else with his free time and all these years later, his wife still doesn’t mind him being gone. What a deal!

Even when he was winning all of those races with Tony, costs had already begun to spiral out of control, making his operation appear quite small when compared to his wealthier USAC counterparts. A long-time employee of Fort Wayne’s International Harvester until the plant closed in the early 1980s, Hazen has never had an abundance of his own cash to spend nor has he ever had a huge backer, so when the opportunity came to maintain the sprint car inventory belonging to Anderson’s Larry Contos, he jumped at the chance. Chasing the All Star Circuit of Champions trail with Steve Imel serving as wheelman, it was a frustrating 1990 season, with Paul choosing to back out towards the end of the year, sitting out 1991 in entirety.

Too Many To Count – Hazen has run out of room for all of the trophies he has accumulated over the years.

Hungering for feature wins, they came quite plentifully with Kevin Thomas when he returned to battle in 1992. Ten times they visited victory lane, but an even more impressive statistic is that they only finished outside of the top-five three times, never outside of the top-ten! 1992 proved even more special when Robbie Stanley stepped in for the USAC shows after Thomas suffered a broken hand mid-way through the summer, allowing Paul to play a vital role in Robbie’s second of three USAC sprint car championships, something he still cherishes so dearly today.

A couple of seasons with several drivers led to an Elliott reunion and to no one’s surprise, it was if they had never skipped a beat, dominating the local Indiana sprint car proceedings as they did in the late 1980s. However, a dismal first-half of 1997 led to a permanent parting of the ways. Hazen’s misery continued when trying to sort out a pair of unhappy racecars with an assortment of drivers, so agonizing that he put everything up for sale at the end of the year. Mentally and physically drained, could he truly walk away after forty years?

Staying away from the scene for a large part of 1998, the juices started flowing when sniffing incredible chassis and engine deals, the latter being his first-ever aluminum block acquisition. Unable to say no to both, in the blink of an eye he was fully-immersed in the sport yet again, soon hiring midget standout Jay Drake. He and Jay just never clicked and in search of a fill-in for the last three races of 1999, Paul convinced a soon-to-be-retiring Jon Stanbrough to give it one last go.

Those last three races showed enough promise that they re-upped for 2000, finding victory lane four times, two of them at Terre Haute which was a place that had previously puzzled Paul. Much like Jim and Tony Elliott, his chemistry with Jon was nothing short of magical. Thirty-seven times they would triumph, the largest scores coming in USAC unions at Putnamville, Terre Haute (Hulman Classic), Eldora, and Lawrenceburg. Also laying claim to yet another Kokomo title and a King of Indiana Sprint Series crown, nineteen of the thirty-seven came during a glorious summer of 2003 and in true David versus Goliath fashion, Paul proved that the little guy could still get the job done against the stiffest of competition.

It’s hard to believe that such a productive partnership could sour, but that was the reality early into the 2004 campaign, ending an outstanding four year reign on a positive note with yet another Kokomo conquest. A myriad of men have climbed through the roll cage since then, the latest being young gasser Thomas Meseraull, whose aggressive driving style has revived energy and enthusiasm for Paul’s perennial sprint car pursuits.

Check It Out – Billy Puterbaugh and Paul Hazen teamed for three wins over the 2005 and 2006 seasons. (Dave Merritt photo)

Since becoming a sprint car owner in 1968, the list of his preferred pilots is literally a who’s-who of racing. Uncertain if complete or not, at this stage the compilation shows, in no particular order: Jim Elliott, Don Hewitt, Louie Mann, Rocky Fisher, Ed Angle, Mark Caldwell, Richard Jackson, Butch Wilkerson, Tony Elliott, Jeff Gordon, Tony Ploughe, Tim Bookmiller, Gary Fisher, Larry Rice, Steve Imel, Kevin Thomas, Robbie Stanley, Brad Marvel, Tim Champlin, Johnny Parsons, Stevie Reeves, Kent Christian, Tray House, Dave Darland, Russ Gamester, Brian Tyler, Bill Tyler, Tony Jarrett, Joe Roush, Brian Black, Mike Mann, Sheldon Kinser, Jr., Derek Davidson, Aaron Mosley, Bill Rose, Ted Hines, Jay Drake, Tracy Hines, Jon Stanbrough, Jason Robbins, A.J. Anderson, Casey Shuman, Bryan Clauson, Kevin Briscoe, Billy Puterbaugh, Josh Spencer, Matt Hardin, Bryan Stanfill, Marc Arnold, Critter Malone, Shane Cottle, Shane Hollingsworth, and his latest, Thomas Meseraull. What an interesting array of talent, wouldn’t you agree?

If the number of wins measures greatness, then it’s hard to tell just how Hazen stacks up against other famous car owners, as the shoddy recordkeeping of local Indiana bullrings prevents such a comparison. For sure owning fifteen track championships (including one of his own), when quizzed about the win total Paul proclaimed, “If I were to guess, off the top of my head it would be at least 200 wins.”

Already inducted into the Hoosier Auto Racing Hall of Fame, maybe we won’t ever know that exact number. But when considering his number of years of involvement, some things are almost certain: it may never be possible to surpass his burning desire to compete nor his undying passion for and dedication to sprint car racing. Keeping the flame burning bright for the little guy, his perseverance and consistent ability to field a competitive sprint car on the tightest of budgets is truly inspiring. Occasionally sneaking in there to beat the big dogs and their deep pockets, that’s what keeps his gears turning and wheels in motion. Win or lose, it is no surprise that he is seemingly unchanged in his modesty and understatement, as he’s not the type of guy to blow his earnings on a fancy truck and trailer or a lot of chrome. But if winning that big race allows him to get to the next event, that’s all he could ever hope for.

Entering his fifty-fourth season of racing, lasting that long in such a hostile environment is an utterly amazing feat, as so many things could have caused him to throw in the towel for good. Soaring costs, unruly racecars, difficult driver relationships, miniscule purses, deaths of close friends – you name it – and he’s managed to rise above and press on regardless. Although the game has changed significantly, he’s still in it and he’s still someone that you have to elbow out of the way for first place rights. After all these years, that’s a victory in of itself. So score one, a huge one, for the little guy.

Obviously a special thank you goes out to Mr. Paul Hazen for spending a snowy Saturday afternoon in early January with me, answering well over a hundred questions and attempting to recall the details of events that took place several decades ago. It is indeed a valid statement that Paul has forgotten more about sprint car racing than most of us will ever know.

Thinking It Over– Apparently dismayed with the setup, Paul Hazen talks it over with driver Matt Hardin. (Dave Merritt photo)

Also contributing facts, figures, and stories were Tony Elliott, Sue (Elliott) Priest, Tony Ploughe, Kevin Lindley, Roger Brandon, Derek Fisher, Kim Baney and of course Kevin Eckert, whose database of sprint car statistics (www.openwheeltimes.com) was the tool used most extensively in formulating questions.

Additional appreciation is extended to Jim Fisher (www.fscpictorial.com), Dave Merritt (www.davespitpassphotos.com), John Mahoney (jmahoneypix@yahoo.com), Dave Gansert (http://dkgphoto.smugmug.com/), Randy Jones (randyjonesphoto@verizon.net), Kim Baney (www.warsawspeedway.com), and Paul Hazen for graciously allowing me to pick and choose from their outstanding archives, adding considerable color to an already interesting story. If you are in the need to add any of this photographic art to your collection, I urge you to contact any one of them.

I always preface these question and answer articles with the warning that this is a very lengthy piece, so it may be more desirable to digest in more than one sitting. So change into your comfy clothes, sit in your cushy chair, grab a drink, and sink your teeth into the story of one of the all-time underdogs - Paul Hazen. Enjoy!

KO: You recently had hip replacement surgery. When was that?

Paul: November the fifth.

KO: How long were you in the hospital?

Paul: They did it on the fifth and then I got out on the tenth of November.

KO: So how are you feeling right now?

Paul: Real good. I’m coming along real good.

KO: And you’re able to get around ok?

Paul: Yes. I have a little hobble yet.

KO: Still using the cane – or will that be going away pretty soon?

Paul: Oh yeah. It’s a New Year’s resolution.

KO: There you go. So how long have you known that you needed that procedure done?

Paul: Oh, it had been bothering me for about three or four years. I knew last year that I was going to have to have it done.

KO: Have you always lived in and around Columbia City, Indiana?

Paul: Yes, my whole life.

The Team – A classic shot if there ever was one, Paul Hazen and Phil Heinsmand are kneeling while engine builder Earl Gaerte stands. Jim Elliott is seated in the car. (Paul Hazen photo)

KO: Right around this area or more into town?

Paul: Whitley County.

KO: Hmmm. That’s county number 92, the last one in the alphabet sequence they used to have on the Indiana license plates.

I know you are still married, but I have not seen your wife in quite some time.

Paul: She doesn’t go much anymore.

KO: And I forgot her name since I haven’t seen her in so long.

Paul: Delores.

KO: Thank you. So how long have you two been married?

Paul: 51 years.

KO: So you’ve been racing longer than you’ve been married!

Paul: Uh-huh.

KO: How many kids?

Paul: Got one daughter – Karen and she’s…I’ve got to figure this up. She was born in ’59.

KO: So when and where do you remember seeing your first race?

Paul: It would have been Warsaw.

KO: Any idea how old you were at the time?

Paul: Probably 17.

KO: Ok, so you really weren’t around racing much, like your dad taking you to the races when you were a kid?

Paul: No.

The Museum – Adorned with trophies, pictures, and all kinds of artifacts, Paul Hazen’s shop is like a museum.

KO: What was it about racing that got your hooked, making you decide this is how you wanted to spend the majority of your free time and money? What did it for you?

Paul: Well, I was pretty wild on the street. So I just kind of thought, you know, I was getting some tickets. I was doing some crazy stuff. I just thought that maybe it was better to do it on the track. That’s kind of how I got into it.

KO: Did you ever catch any races at the Fort Wayne Speedway, that high-banked track that was kind of like Winchester? It was not located too far from here on what was then called California Road, or U.S. 30.

Paul: Yes. One time.

KO: One time…what did you think of that place?

Paul: I didn’t like it!

KO: Did you race there?

Paul: Yeah – I drove there. I wasn’t real crazy about that.

KO: Was it just too fast and dangerous? I know that some guys flipped out of the place. I would think that they would have had some sort of rail around the top but obviously that didn’t stop them from going over.

Paul: I don’t remember who that was that day but he went off of the far end. That would have been the north end of it. He ended up out in a tree. And I said, “Nuh-uh! This ain’t fun!”

KO: Was it asphalt by that time? For the day, I imagine it was plenty fast.

Paul: Yeah, it was.

KO: On the south side of the city, wasn’t there another track? It got started after the high-banked joint closed down.

Paul: South Anthony.

KO: Did you ever race there?

Paul: No, I never did.

The Klassic – Tony and Paul were 1988 Kokomo Klassic winners. (Jim Fisher photo)

KO: So you’ve been a Warsaw guy from the beginning?

Paul: Yeah, that’s about all I did was Warsaw.

KO: From watching the races or when you first started, were there any individuals who influenced you or captured your imagination early on, some guys who you wanted to be like?

Paul: Well, back in the day it was Don Walker. He was real good. And then of course Jim Elliott. Those two were the main ones.

KO: So they were just really good on the racetrack – knew what they were doing?

Paul: Yeah. I always said Jim could probably run a wheelbarrow around the track and win, you know! And Don was just about the same way. They were naturals. Don was from Kokomo – Jeff’s dad.

KO: Talking about your days of being a driver, you started in 1957. Everyone says that your number represents the year you started, but how long did those driving days last?

Paul: Oh, till about ’67. I think it was ten years.

KO: When you’re driving down the road today, do you ever have flashbacks to the days that you spent behind the wheel?

Paul: Not really anymore.

KO: You already talked about competing at Fort Wayne and Warsaw. Where else would you have competed?

Paul: I think we ran New Paris a few times. Not a lot. I think that was about it.

KO: So pretty much a Saturday and Sunday night racer?

Paul: Yes.

KO: You already talked about Don Walker and Jim Elliott, but do you happen to remember any of the other driver’s names that you competed against and knew that you had to beat?

Paul: (Long pause) Let’s see. None are registering right now.

KO: Ok. That’s fine. Maybe you’ll remember as we go on. And as far as the success you had as a driver, were there any wins in those ten years?

Paul: Yeah. In fact, the last year I ran, I think it was the last year I ran, I won the championship at Warsaw and that’s when I decided it was time to move on.

Hired Help – For the 1990 season, Paul went to work for Larry Contos. Driver Steve Imel is shown at a Kokomo USAC event. (Jim Fisher photo)

KO: And that would have been in the modifieds or supermodifieds?

Paul: That would have been in the modifieds. I started in stock, what they called strictly stock and then I went to hobby stocks and then modifieds. Then I went to sprint cars as an owner. During the last year I ran, that was the modifieds.

KO: The modifieds were a lot like a sprint car back then?

Paul: Yeah. I won the championship that year and that’s when I went into the sprint cars and that’s when Jim started driving for me.

KO: Your first racecar, if it would have been strictly stock, what kind of car was that?

Paul: (Laughing) It was a ’37 Ford coupe. I’ve got a picture back here I’ll show you.

KO: Flathead?

Paul: Um-hmm.

KO: Do you remember what you spent to purchase that car?

Paul: I would doubt if I had over $500 in the whole car.

KO: Speaking of your car number, it’s been 57 ever since I remember and the legend has it that the reason for that number is because you have been racing since 1957. Did you have another reason for number 57, at least when you were starting out that people don’t know about?

Paul: Nope. That was it. It just popped into my mind. 57. It’s a good number to have. I’ll never forget the year I started.

KO: Other than the days when you worked on the Contos car, it’s always been 57?

Paul: Yes. Well, there was one year that we ran USAC and we had to have 53. 53 was the closest we could get that year. I never again did that because I think that was one of the years that Caldwell drove and was probably the worst year I ever had. And I’m NOT superstitious, but…

The Debut – Thomas Meseraull makes his debut in the Hazen 57 on 6/19/09. (Dave Gansert photo)

KO: But you went back to 57 the next year I would guess?

Paul: YES!

KO: So you talked about driving for ten years, and just to be certain, was it the ’68 season when Jim Elliott started driving for you? And the reason for the switch was that you accomplished everything that you wanted to as a driver – some wins and a track championship? Did you have bigger goals as a car owner?

Paul: Yeah, that was part of it. It was starting to get to the point – I know there are guys doing it today – driving and owning – to me it was getting to the point where it was too much. Of course I was working a full-time job along with it. It just got to where it was zapping me and taking some of the fun out.

KO: For many reasons, racing wasn’t nearly as expensive back when you started, but it still took some money. What kind of a job allowed you the time and money to race? Was that the job at International Harvester?

Paul: Well, 1959 was when I started at International. That would have been two years in, but from then on, yes, that was the job.

KO: Talking about International Harvester in Fort Wayne, did you have any other jobs before working at that plant?

Paul: Yeah. I worked at Swift and Company at night, unloading semi trailers.

KO: Swift – like the meat packing deal? And that was in Fort Wayne also?

Paul: Yeah. They had those big quarters and halves that come in hanging on hooks on the trailers and we had to carry those in.

KO: Wow! So that built up some muscles I would guess?

Paul: Yeah. It wasn’t a real fun job.

KO: Ended up smelling like meat at the end of the night I bet…

So the job at International started in ’59, but were you there up until they closed the plant?

Paul: Yes.

KO: So we’re talking about ’82 or ’83 that they closed it?

Paul: Yeah, ’82 or ’83.

Teamwork – Thomas Meseraull assists Paul in the changing of a left rear torsion bar. (Dave Merritt photo)

KO: What were your positions at International?

Paul: Well, I started out as a floor sweeper and worked my way up. I was on the assembly line. I was in the machine shop for a while. And it ended up that my last job was welding.

KO: I know we talked about it earlier, but they had the Scout plant up there, which was really one of the first SUVs, other than the Jeep. But you actually worked on the heavy trucks, maybe medium duty or semis?

Paul: Semis.

KO: That plant once employed almost 11,000 people in the city. I have to imagine it was doom and gloom in Fort Wayne after it shut down. But did you ever own anything that they built there, even the Scout?

Paul: Nope.

KO: How hard was it to race and hold down the job at International? It seems like you told me a few interesting stories about Sunday night races and attempting to get back to work on time, particularly from Kokomo and maybe even Haubstadt. Can you tell me any of those stories again?

Paul: (Laughing) Well Kokomo, we’d run and get the show in. I’d race home, clean up a little, jump in the car, and head into work. I worked third trick. I’d rush in there. If they had a late night, I’d get there four hours late. But normally I’d get there on time, every Sunday night. If I got there four hours late, in our package of benefits, they had a week of paid absences that I could use. So if I got there four hours late, I’d use four of them hours, which didn’t count against me as coming in late that way. So that’s the way I kind of flipped through there.

KO: So you probably never had a lot of vacation time to use?

Paul: Not a lot, no.

KO: Was there a suicide mission from Haubstadt in those stories, or did you just try and stay away from Haubstadt, knowing it was way too far?

Paul: I don’t remember the Haubstadt deal. Did I tell you something about that?

KO: You might have, but for all I know it might have just been Kokomo. It seems like it would have been a far-fetched deal to do Haubstadt, at least where you live.

Paul: The only thing I remember about Haubstadt was – years and years ago. I could leave here, go to Haubstadt, we’d run the show down there, and then I’d turn around and drive back. I made the whole trip without staying over anywhere.

KO: That’s quite a haul. From my house, it’s three solid hours to get there at a pretty good clip. You’re at least a couple of hours from my house. Five hours or more?

Paul: It’s five or five and a half, at least. And then round trip, ten or eleven hours, and you’ve got the night down there racing. It was a good haul. Nowadays, I wouldn’t even think about trying to do that.

KO: So just to confirm, the first guy you hired to drive your racecar was Jim Elliott?

Paul: Yes.

KO: So how long did he drive for you? Would he have started off in sprint cars, or did they call them supermodifieds?

Paul: They were sprint cars. I’m going to say about four years. I think it was about four years.

Teacher and Pupil – Paul Hazen and Josh Spencer pose before a Gas City gathering in the summer of 2006. (Dave Merritt photo)

I don’t know if this is going into another question, but he got hit by a rock. We were racing over at Bryan, Ohio and he got hit by a rock. The rock was laying in the cockpit. It looked about like a tomahawk. It hit him right in his eye and put his eye out, which ruined that day, for all of us, everybody. But then, right shortly after that, I’d say a month after that, Don Hewitt got in the car while Jim was recuperating. We went to Eldora and Don drove the car. I don’t remember if it was hot laps or the first lap of the heat race, but the same thing – another rock hit him and put his eye out. You talk about something working on your mind there, you begin to wonder what’s going on! But you know, it never happened after that.

But anyhow, Jim went back to Bryan the following year. In the wintertime, Tony was just small then and he had Tony throwing him a ball in the basement, back and forth. I guess that’s how he got himself to be able to judge distance.

Anyhow, we went back to Bryan the following year and he caught a rut and ended up getting into the wall sideways. It knocked him out. They hauled him into the hospital and the SAME doctor, wouldn’t you know, was on call at the hospital that was on call when he got his eye put out the year before. And you talk about somebody getting chewed out, he chewed us out like you wouldn't believe – for letting him drive a racecar!

He said, “He can’t drive a racecar no more. He ain’t got depth perception!”

I said, “Well, then you better explain that to him because we ain’t going to make him believe it. He’s driving better now than he ever drove before!”

So anyhow, that’s one story.

KO: Wow! Incredible stuff there!

So he drove for you about four years then? It is clear that you two had quite a bit of success judging from all the old trophies you have hanging around this shop. All day today I have been staring at this picture of the Hazen Chevy Sprinter with the USAC registered car decal from ’67…

Paul: That’s the first one right there.

KO: Wow! Feature wins – I’m sure you have no idea of how many total feature wins as an owner. I’d still like to know that number. But as far as track championships, do you remember any from Warsaw?

Paul: (Handing me some pieces of paper) Yeah, here’s a bunch of them. I think that’s all Warsaw stuff there.

KO: (Looking at the piece of paper, I see season championships of second in ’68 and ’69 and first in ’70, ’71, ’72, and ’73, and another second in ’74.) It seems like you guys either won the track title or finished second.

Paul: Yeah, we were consistent.

KO: Did he stop driving for you after 1972?

Paul: Well, what happened was that he got hit. He was on a 750 Honda motorcycle over in Warsaw and a lady ran a yield sign and hit him and killed him.

Serious Business – Paul works on a left rear wheel in the Gas City pit area in May of 2003. (Randy Jones photo)

KO: (Doing some research and speaking with Tony Elliott, I learned that his dad passed away in March of 1973.)

Unfortunately I knew I was going to have to ask that question and knew that at some point, he passed away from an accident on the street. I would assume that he was still your driver when that happened.

Paul: That was a pretty tough deal there, because we had really gotten close, kind of like a brother, you know.

KO: Was he older than you, or about the same age?

Paul: He was older, yeah, a little older.

KO: So as far as the success you two had together, what made it work so well? I know you mentioned something earlier about the weight-jacker he used on the car. You’ve had a lot of drivers in your car, maybe none better than Jim. But what do you think made it work so well? Communication? On the same page? Same type of mentality?

Paul: Um-hmm. Yeah. It was good communication. We thought the same as far as what to do. When things were tight and tough and you needed a tire and didn’t have enough money to get it, he’d say, “Go get a tire. We’ll make the money back.” He’d dish in and help. Everything just worked great. He helped a lot on the car. I’ve had drivers since then that help too, but not like he did.

KO: So you kept the car here, at the house, and he’d come over?

Paul: Yeah, we kept the car here at the house. He had a shop over there where he’d do bodywork and stuff, plus mechanical work. He always did the paint work on the car. He just helped out as much as he could.

KO: I know you already answered the question of the relationship you forged with Jim through the racing, but what about the rest of the family? Were you all pretty close?

Paul: Yeah, we were all pretty close. They had a pontoon out on the lake and if things went good on Saturday night and we were going to Kokomo on Sunday, we’d go over there early on Sunday and go out on the pontoon. We all got along good.

KO: Talent and personality, can you draw any comparisons between Jim and Tony? Were they the same guys? People always say that the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, but I never got to meet Jim and we all know Tony. Tony likes to joke and have fun, but maybe Jim was more serious?

Paul: I think he was a little more that way, but he did a lot of joking too. He liked to have fun. Not that Tony isn’t a hard worker in his businesses, but I think Jim was a little more of the hard-working type guy.

KO: I’ve got so many questions here, so I’ll keep clipping along. We’ve already talked about the rock deal and there is a website dedicated to the memories of the Warsaw Speedway. On that site is a newspaper clipping from a Fort Wayne paper, with an article that was supposedly written by you. Can you believe that? It actually said “By Paul Hazen”. The article was dated October 13^th, 1971 and it said that Jim Elliott was hit by a rock in a race at Bryan, Ohio and lost the sight in one of his eyes. I know you said that you didn’t write that article, but you once told me you thought Bill Hill did, on an account from you. That was kind of odd.

Paul: It’s possible. I don’t know.

KO: You weren’t the writer type, if I had to guess.

Paul: No, I wasn’t! No.

KO: If that race was in October, was it a heavy racetrack? Was that place noted to have rocks like that?

Paul: You know, I don’t know if we’d ever been there before. I don’t really know much about that or heard much about it. I think that was the first time we’d ever been to Bryan.

Reunited – After beginning 1996 apart, Tony Elliott and Paul Hazen reunited for Indiana Sprint Week. Here they are at Paragon on night number two. (Randy Jones photo)

KO: You already mentioned he worked with his depth perception by catching a ball in the basement during the winter months. In the next year, obviously the patch didn’t affect him too much, or did it?

Paul: Everybody was pretty amazed by it. It didn’t seem to affect him much. There is another story too. One night over at Warsaw, he got in a little bit of a tangle and he ended up flipped. At that time, you could stand in the infield over there. We ran over to the car and we’re in the process of helping him get it over on its wheels and see what the damage is. Well, it’s not really hurt too bad. The wing is kind of bent up a little. Anyhow, all of a sudden Jim says, “Hey, I lost my eye!”

So then we’re all hunting for his eye. His glass eye. So they held the race up for ten extra minutes so that we could find his glass eye. We went on and started at the tail and he ended up winning the race that night!

KO: I’m guessing when you found the eye, he didn’t just stick it back in there, or did he?

Paul: No, he didn’t put it back in! He put the patch over it.

(Editor’s note: Tony’s mom Sue actually remembers Jim wiping the glass eye with a shop rag and sticking it back in his eye before restarting the race, a prime example of how recollections differ over the years.)

KO: He kept going and he ended up winning…

Paul: He ended up winning, from the tail! That tells you how good he was.

KO: Wow! He had to be one hell of a shoe!

Paul: The wing is all bent down around the car you know…

KO: Wow! That is pretty amazing. There’s no way such a story could exist in today’s day and age.

Speaking of solid relationships, I read somewhere that you and engine builder Dick Kercher have been together since 1969. I would guess that you two met at Warsaw, but is that where it happened? How did the relationship start?

Paul: Well actually, Dick and Earl Gaerte started the shop at Gaerte Engines, together. I guess that’s how I met Dick. He worked down there and Earl was doing a lot of my motor work at the time – machining work. When Dick quit there, well I just kind of went with him. That’s how we got started.

KO: And you’ve been together ever since?

Paul: Yes.

Rare Sighting – Not known to field an asphalt car, with the help of Phil Walker Hazen’s 57 is seen at Winchester with Kevin Thomas in 1994. (Jim Fisher photo).

KO: Everybody who does business with Dick always has the most positive, glowing remarks about him. At least from your perspective, what can you say about Kercher and all the things he has meant to your racing operation?

Paul: He’s meant a lot. It’s just unbelievable what he can do. If you’re out there and you’re having trouble and can’t figure out what it is, he’ll come to the track. One time he might say we need to change the cam. We’ve got to cam the motor to the driver because the driver can’t handle the motor, you know? He changes the cam in it and we go back to the track and you’re all set again, ready to go. That’s one thing. If you’ve got any problem, all you’ve got to do is give him a call and he’ll set and talk, help you out as much as he can.

KO: As far as the relationship lasting all these years, marriages sometimes don’t last that long. People wear on each other. How has the relationship between you two lasted all of these years? Is it just that he is an easy going guy and you’re an easy going guy?

Paul: Yeah. I think we kind of think a lot down the same line on a lot of things. We’ve not one time ever had an argument or a disagreement that I can ever recall.

KO: And he’s a pretty good welder? Did he learn in the service?

Paul: Yes. I’d say he’s probably the best welder that I know of. I asked him one time, “How did you learn to weld so good?”

Well, he said, “Uncle Sam taught me. I was in the Navy and when you welded on them ships, they didn’t dare leak!”

I’ve seen him take aluminum blocks, where the main web will be busted clear out of it. He doesn’t weld that broken out web piece back in. He won’t do that. He takes that block and grinds it up, gets it ready and everything, and just builds that whole thing back up with rod. He says that’s stronger than welding a piece back in. He brings the whole piece back up and puts it in a Bridgeport or some type of machine and mills it back out.

This is how far out I got with him one time. I had a radiator, and this is before I knew you could fix them with an epoxy, but I took a radiator down to him. It had one core that had a crack in it, about a quarter of an inch long.

I took that down to him and said, “I know this is going way out, but do you think you could weld that? You ain’t ever let me down yet. Anything I’ve ever brought to you, you could weld.”

He said, “Well, we can try it!”

He cleaned that thing up and worked on it for quite a little while, but he finally got it patched up to where it didn’t leak. I thought that was really something.

KO: You don’t hear about people doing that. They just throw it out and start new.

All these years later, have your thoughts and opinions on Kercher changed any?

Paul: No, they just keep getting better, if anything. They definitely have not gotten any worse.

KO: Going back a little bit, talking about the old modifieds and supermodifieds that you owned and raced, were most of those home-built cars or did you purchase a chassis from somewhere?

Paul: Yes. They were all home built.

KO: As far as rules, was there anything with cubic inches, wings, etc.? Were there any rules to go by or was it “anything goes”?

Paul: I think back then, it was pretty much open. There was a little bit there where you could only have one four barrel carburetor. And then right there at the end, it opened up to where you could have three two barrels. But other than that, your cubic inches, and all the other stuff was open.

KO: I know you told me about the weight jacker with Jim Elliott, but were there things you experimented with back then that might surprise some people today?

Paul: (Laughing) Yeah, I think so. The weight jacker deal was quite a thing. Since then, I’ve rigged up a deal, you probably remember that, down the side. We rigged that up. There were different guys who tried that.

Even Thomas, last summer, we were talking and he said, “I think I’d really like that.” So who knows, it may be coming back again.

Party Time – After nipping Dave Darland for Putnamville Sprint Week glory on 7/21/01, a huge entourage celebrates the victory. (John Mahoney photo)

KO: So were there any other things that you experimented with that may have been wild or radical for its time? I keep looking at that picture of that Kurtis-Kraft nose on that sprint car.

Paul: Well, I remember one time there, this deal came from Karl Kinser. He came up with these shorty – what did they call them - these tubes that stuck out that far, straight out, for headers. And of course everybody back at that time ran the regular headers. All of a sudden, he popped out with them. Well, next thing you knew, half of the outlaw guys were running those straight out headers, because Karl Kinser was running them. So then I decided, well, maybe there was something to that. So I go and buy a set of them and pretty soon, there’s a bunch of other guys running them. And I’m down at Gaerte’s one time and that’s where Karl was working, through Gaerte at the time. Karl was there and we got to talking about those shorty tube headers.

And he said, “Yeah, I was just screwing with the guys. After everyone switched over to them, then we switched back to the regular headers.”

So that’s what we ended up doing too!

KO: Wow! So from Oolitic all the way up to Rochester, old Karl held the span of influence over the entire state!

Paul: Yeah.

KO: We’re in your home town of Columbia City. We’re not that far from Michigan and we’re not that far from Ohio. I imagine that there was a racing scene around here. You mentioned New Paris and there had to be some places you raced in Michigan and Ohio, but other than Warsaw, did you take your car anywhere outside of Indiana? In the early days of car ownership, where else would we have seen the Hazen 57?

Paul: We got to running Lima, Ohio, there at one time, real regular, about every week. I think that would have been with Mark Caldwell, back in those days. We ran Eldora a few times, but not a lot, back then. We used to go up to I-96 and Crystal, in Michigan. I can’t remember the other tracks, but there were three or four tracks we ran in Michigan. That was about it.

Springfield, Illinois. We used to go over to Little Springfield. We’d go over there every year, at the end of the year.

KO: They probably had some tough guys over there. It was a pretty wild, little track. Other than Macon, there’s nothing really like it today, especially for sprint cars. That was a pretty small track, maybe a quarter or a fifth mile.

Paul: Like a bowl.

KO: I’m sure there was some very close racing there.

Paul: Yeah, there was!

KO: I’m curious as to who you remember being your toughest competitors. I know these are some difficult questions, going back that far. You already mentioned Don Walker. But if you were to go over to Lima, who did you have to beat there?

Paul: We had Ferkel. Dick Gaines. Let’s see. Doc Dawson. That’s all I ever knew him by. Don Hewitt. Let’s see…that’s all that’s popping out right now.

KO: Around here at Warsaw, other than Don Walker, any other hot dogs? Maybe Bimbo Atkins?

Paul: Yeah, Bimbo. That’s one I hadn’t thought about. He was pretty good. Even Jeff Walker. Jeff got to running good up there.

KO: I remember the name Paul Grimm. I met him at an All Star show up there in ’89.

Paul: Yeah, Paul Grimm. He was a pretty tough competitor. He had that GMC six cylinder.

KO: At least for the guys who had success in those modifieds and supermodifieds, was it more driver skill than quality of equipment? How much did equipment matter back then?

Paul: Well, it was still important, but back then I think it was a lot more driver. I can remember back when we didn’t even have power steering, you know?

KO: Quality of equipment may not have mattered like today, but I bet your competitors thought you had a great car.

Paul: You still had to maintain it. You still had to have pretty decent stuff. Not as near as close as it is today. Today you’ve got it have it right on the money with everything.

KO: Like that picture I keep staring at, if that car was USAC registered in 1967, would you have had to have a 302 engine?

Paul: Yes. A 302 was what it was back then.

KO: Would you have run the whole year with that 302?

Paul: Most of the time we did but we eventually got to where we had a 302 and a 350. Then we ran the 350 on the non-USAC races. For a long time, we just had the 302 and that was it.

KO: Talking about sprint car chassis, what was the first true sprint car chassis you owned? Would it have been an Edmunds or a CAE? That may go way far back…

Paul: Well, that one right there (in the picture), that’s a Kurtis-Kraft. That would have been the first one.

KO: I recognize the nose on that. You probably don’t have that nose anymore, do you?

Paul: No. I loved that thing. We got that one busted up one time and you wouldn’t believe what I went through – they were hard to come by even back then. I dug and dug and finally found someone who had another one like it.

KO: So you’re weren’t the type of guy to hammer one out and use an English wheel, huh? That takes a lot of time.

Paul: Yeah right.

Paradise – Relaxing in lawn chairs with Thomas Meseraull before the battle begins, is there any place he’d rather be? (Dave Merritt photo)

KO: So the Kurtis-Kraft was the first one then?

Paul: Yeah. When I bought that car, that was the sticker that had been on it. It had been running in USAC. I think it was a year later when I got that car. But it originally had an Offenhauser in it. I didn’t get the motor with it.

The guy I bought it off of asked, “What are you going to run in it?”

I said, “Uh, a Chevy.”

He said, “It’ll never work.”

Man, it worked like you wouldn’t believe. It worked great!

KO: I remember reading that Kurtis-Kraft primarily built midgets and Indycars. I didn’t know if that was a stretched midget and that’s what they based that car off of. I wonder if the wheelbase was a little shorter than a normal sprint car. I never heard too much about Kurtis sprint cars.

Paul: No, that was a regular sprint car.

KO: When was the first time your sprint car featured power steering? Was it the early ‘70s, mid-‘70s, late-‘70s? Who would have driven it? Do you remember that? Would that have been in the Mark Caldwell era?

Paul: (Thinking) It probably would have been in that era. Yeah, I would say that’s about right.

KO: Even in NASCAR, power steering finally came around in the late ‘70s. Would people have looked down on you, calling your driver a wimp for having that on your car?

Paul: Uhhh, I don’t think so. It was just a coming thing. I know back when Jim drove, it was definitely manual steering then. I can remember when we had an old Nordhorn, I think that’s what you called it, steering unit. Something happened to it. We made a run to Kokomo on Sunday. Some guy down there had a building full of used parts but he wouldn’t sell nothing. I don’t remember the guy’s name. But anyhow, Jim talked him out of it. He wouldn’t sell it to us, but we talked him out of letting us use it. We got through the weekend with it. I know that was still with manual steering back then.

KO: In between Jim and Tony Elliott, in doing a little research I know that two of your drivers were Mark Caldwell and Richard Jackson. With Jackson, I believe you finished 2^nd at the Little 500 in 1978. I never really knew you to be a pavement guy, but how hard did you work to try to win the Little 500 in the 1970s? I know that was a good paying race. Was that the motivation to run that race?

Paul: Yeah, somewhat. Of course there was the history of it. We just decided to give it a whirl. We put a lot into it.

I think that was the year we didn’t even think we were going to get qualified. We went down there and I think they had qualifying on the week before. But anyhow, we went down to qualify and we’re in line and it starts raining. Of course we were ok at that point because they didn’t have 33 cars. Anyhow, they cancelled the rest of the day. We went back the next day and we’re setting down there in line and it’s starting to drizzle and act up again. At this point, they’re up there, they’ve got enough to make the field, which means if it pours down raining, we’re done. Anyhow, we’re setting down there in line. They got the track dried again and it kind of cleared up. They go and qualify some more cars. And just as we’re pushing off, it starts just barely sprinkling. I’m thinking, “Ohhhhh GOD!”

He goes out there and made his four laps. For the last two, the track was wet. He’s sliding all over the place, you know. I’m thinking, “Ohhhhh God.”

He bumped the 33^rd place guy off. The track was done. We were the last one to qualify. Nobody else qualified.

KO: That’s the year you got second?

Paul: Yep. We started dead last. We talked about it and talked about it. Our theory was, run half of the race, don’t even worry about going forward, just get what you could but not take any chances. Halfway through, if everything was still looking good with the car, start progressing. I think three-fourths of the way through, that’s when Butch Wilkerson entered into it. He subbed. Something happened to him early on so I got him over there in case we needed a sub. He finished the race for us.

KO: I don’t know if you had power steering in your car then, but that would have worn a lot of guys out without power steering.

Paul: Um, you know, I wouldn’t doubt it because I know a lot of people said we won it. You know, it don’t matter. We got paid for second. The records show second. But anyhow, Curt Kelley was the one who won it that year. I can remember it just like looking over there. He’s like this, holding himself in the car with the steering wheel, driving. So I don’t know, they might not have had power steering then.

KO: So with Mark Caldwell, in looking through the records, you ran a few World of Outlaw programs in 1978. You ran 4^th at Limaland and 4^th at Paragon in a preliminary to the big 150 lapper. What do you remember about those early WoO shows? The next question tied into that is, how did your equipment stack up against the guys who traveled with the series, like Karl Kinser’s car? Did they have a little bit better stuff – more lightweight pieces?

Paul: I think we were behind at that time. They had better stuff and they probably had lighter stuff. But it’s the same old story. We just tried to do the best we could.

Papa Louie – Posing near Paul’s 1981 ride, “Papa” Louie Mann was a 1973 and 1979 Warsaw Speedway champion for Hazen. (Warsaw Speedway photo)

KO: You still got fourth and there might have even been better finishes, but would you say the disparity between the big guy and the little guy wasn’t as big back then?

Paul: Yeah. It wasn’t near as big then. Kind of the same old story though. It made you feel so good when you could run with ‘em and be competitive with ‘em.

KO: Is there anything in particular you remember about your drivers Caldwell and Jackson? Obviously your memories of Jim Elliott are second to none, but what about these guys? Were they from around this area?

Paul: Both of them were from Kokomo at that time. Mark is still in Kokomo. Mark (chuckle), he was good. I can’t say anything bad about him, but man did he tear up equipment. And like I say, it wasn’t him. He was a high groove runner. Very seldom ever was it anything he caused, but there was always someone sticking a wheel in him. There was the one year he drove for me, from the time we started early in the year until Labor Day, I think it was something like nine times we were upside down. And the last time totaled it. That was at Millstream. I didn’t think he was ever going to quit flipping that time. It was in the trophy dash. It’s just that he was like a victim, all of the time.

KO: And then with Richard, anything stick out?

Paul: Richard , other than originally being from Evansville and moving to Kokomo, I guess there’s nothing that really stands out there.

KO: I don’t have nearly as many races in my records with him compared to Caldwell. It seems like the ones I do have are at the Little 500, so was he more of a pavement type driver?

Paul: No, he run Kokomo. He run dirt a lot. I think that was his big thing. I don’t remember that he ever ran much pavement through the years.

KO: We’re up to question number 33, and we’ve got plenty to go, but in between Jim and Tony Elliott, we already talked about Caldwell and Jackson. I see on the list Louie Mann and Butch Wilkerson, but I’m trying to figure out who drove your car in that timeframe. Louie Mann – how long did that last? Was it just a few shows or was it a season or two?

Paul: I think that was a full season or so.

KO: Unfortunately, I don’t have him in any of my results.

Paul: (Taking his time, looking through the list of drivers.) Yeah, I’m trying to place him. I think that was pretty much a full season.

KO: So the list you have of your drivers, that’s pretty full? It says 43-plus. Any memories of Louie Mann that come to mind right off the bat? You’re already chuckling there.

(Later my research confirmed that Louie and Paul won the Warsaw track championship in 1973 and 1979.)

Paul: I don’t know if I ought to say this or not. You can delete it, can’t you?

KO: I can delete it if you want.

Paul: Louie, well he always had this line of crap, you know?

He’d come to the track and walk up and say (in a distinct, nasally tone), “Welllll, how’s this piece of SHIT tonight? You got this SHIT BOX ready to go?”

That was his old saying.

KO: Did he drive it like it was stolen? Did he drive the piss out of it?

Paul: Yeah, he drove it hard. He didn’t worry about it. And he did a lot and won a lot of races too. He was just a guy that you dare didn’t let get to you, you know? You let it go in one ear and out the other and go on.

Office Attire – A t-shirt and jeans have forever been Paul Hazen’s signature racetrack attire. (Dave Merritt photo)

KO: He was a legendary guy for sure, at least from what I’ve heard. Fast forwarding to Tony, the first time I have on record of him driving for you was 1982. (Researching with Tony, the year was actually 1981.) Talking 1982, Tony would have been 20 or 21 years old. Whenever it was, what made you decide that it was finally time to put him in the seat? Had he been bugging you about the ride?

Paul: He’d asked me a year or so before that, wanting me to put him in the car. I told him that I just can’t afford to break a guy in. I have to have somebody I know who is experienced, who can do it, you know? He’d been trying to get a ride with other people.

He said, “Well how am I ever going to get into sprint cars?”

I said, “Well unless you are ungodly lucky with a lot of money, you’re going to probably have to get something of your own. It don’t have to be something super special or good, just something of your own and show people that you can do it. There will be people watching.”

Basically he ended up doing that and I guess the year he started driving for me, about halfway through the season, he come down there one night and wanted to know if I could come down and look at his car. He said, “It just doesn’t have much spring to it.”

So anyhow, I said, “Yeah, I’ll come down.”

I came down and looked at it and pushed on it. He was right. It didn’t give much. It had kind of a squeak to it. I said, “How long has it been since you had the bars out of this?”

He said, “What do you mean?”

I said, “You’ve got to take the bars out, clean them, re-grease them about every week or so!”

He said, “Oh yeah?”

I’d been watching him and the way he’d been running that car, and that car in that kind of shape, I thought, “Man, this guy’s got some potential!” He did that, cleaned them bars and stuff, and he really started going. So that’s kind of the starting story on him.

KO: From that same Warsaw Speedway website, they had some early pictures of Tony. I saw a picture of him from 1979, sitting on the right rear of a number 35. He was all of 18 at the time. I saw a picture of another 35, a light blue sprinter, from ’78. But I also saw a picture of him running a Nova street stock at the age of 15 in ’76. At least in those early years, other than coming down to look at his torsion bars, did you ever spend any time with him at the track when he was first starting out?

Paul: No, I don’t believe so.

KO: But I know you had to see him every week. How serious was Tony about his racing when he was a teenager? Was he pretty hardcore?

Paul: I think so. I think he ran that Nova and was doing pretty good in that. He wanted to do it. He had it in the genes.

KO: Right off the bat, you and Tony went USAC racing and knowing Tony, I would guess that he had no problem adjusting to the pressure of racing against bigger names.

Paul: No, he got right in there and got after it.

KO: So did you two have any issues adjusting to one another?

Paul: Ohhh, really not. Nothing major you know. We got along pretty good.

KO: Did Tony come over here to help maintain the car during the week or did he just show up and drive?

Paul: He pretty much showed up to drive. He might come over two or three times during the summer. He mainly just showed up to drive at the track.

KO: So as far as the success you had right off the bat, the first win I can find in my records is June 4^th, 1983 at Warsaw. I also found a win a week later on June 11^th. Can you remember any wins before June of ’83? Did you have any wins in the first year or did it take a year to get that first win? These records are pretty sporadic.

Paul: Well, I would have thought so, but I can’t say for sure. (Tony Elliott confirmed a couple of wins in ’81.)

KO: At what point did you know that Tony was going to be something special? When you helped him with the bars on his car, did you know he was going to be special at that point?

Paul: Well, he had popped into my mind back then. But going back to what we were just talking about, I think we started pretty much winning right out of the box. That’s when I really thought that. I don’t think we had to spend much time to where we were winning races.

KO: Gotcha. Since the records aren’t that solid, I’m going off of your memory and knowing Tony, that doesn’t surprise me one bit!

I know you gathered a bunch of feature wins at Warsaw and Kokomo with Tony during the mid-‘80s. In looking up the Kokomo records, I can find track championships in ’85, ’87, ’88 and ’89, and they went off the number of feature wins you got. But were there any Warsaw championships with Tony? And, what about Gas City, when they first opened up? I’m not sure how much you focused on track titles back then.

Paul: I’m pretty sure we got at least one championship at Gas City, because he was tough there. When they first opened, it was just like you put a string on a yo-yo. He was right up there around the top and won a lot of races there. So I would surmise that we won a championship there.

Odd Number – Not always number 57, one year during the 1970s Paul Hazen was forced to use number 53 for USAC activities. This looks like Mark Caldwell sliding through Terre Haute’s fourth corner. (Paul Hazen photo)

KO: What about Warsaw? Let me look at your paperwork. I probably need to make some copies of this. Let’s see, we’ve got second in ’82 and a championship in ’83. He was definitely ready to go.

Paul: Yeah, he came right out of the box.

KO: At least we know you got a Warsaw title in ’83 for sure.

Back in the mid to late ‘80s, I recall Ross Chevrolet being a sponsor of the Hazen 57. I’m not sure what TNT was, but it was also on the car.

Paul: That was a place out of Michigan. But you know, I never ever really did get anybody to tell me what that stood for. The only thing I could ever get out of anybody was ‘two nice titties’.

KO: (Erupting in laughter)

Paul: So I know that ain’t what it was!

KO: It sounds like Tony might have made that up!

Paul: Yep, I think that’s who it was. It was actually someone he knew up there. Don Warnock. He knew this TNT guy.

KO: Up until that time, did you have any significant sponsorship? Most of the old pictures I have seen, your hood said “Hazen Chevy Sprinter” on it. In that old picture of the Kurtis Kraft, I see K&B Auto Sales up on the wing and that’s out of Warsaw. Are there any other sponsors that come to mind in those early days?

Paul: That was pretty much it at the start. There wasn’t much at all.

KO: Let’s fast forward to August 6^th, 1987. It was a Thursday night and ESPN was there to televise a USAC sprint car race LIVE at Santa Fe Speedway in Hinsdale, Illinois. It was an epic battle to the end, with Steve Butler riding the rim and Tony tracing the bottom. Tony just nipped him at the line. That was the first USAC victory for him and for you as well.

Paul: I think and I’m not sure, but was it the first televised USAC race – live?

KO: It might have been. I know there had been some ESPN races way back in the day, but I’m not sure if those were live or tape delayed. I also recall the ABC Wide World of Sports events at Eldora and Terre Haute that were delayed, but I’m not sure if there was a live one in there or not. They might have had a live show for the Hulman Classic back in the ‘70s.

But what did a USAC victory mean to you as a car owner and competitor?

Paul: That was pretty big. That’s one of my specials right there. I can remember it like yesterday. We were standing out there in the infield and of course, Vogler, he was there too. He was coming from the back, forward. Tony and Butler were up there, duking it out.

I’m like, “Oh, here comes Vogler!”

And the guy standing beside me, he’s watching everybody, he said, “Oh, you don’t have to worry about him. He ain’t going to make the whole race. He’s banging off the wall every corner with the right rear.”

Anyhow, I keep watching and looking and he’s still coming. So anyhow, I heard someone say, “Well, that’s it.” I looked and there’s Vogler and the right rear tire was flat. He bumped her once too many times. Yeah, that was real special.

Steve Butler – he was real tough.

Noted Author – Paul Hazen is noted as penning this article for a Fort Wayne newspaper. Paul didn’t actually write it however. (Warsaw Speedway photo)

KO: Can you remember the emotions in victory lane? Any tears of joy? Any yelling? Or was it just smiles?

Paul: Well, it was a little bit of everything I think. As soon as we got the checkered flag, we were in the infield back then, and we’re starting to go over to where he was going to stop. And here’s Phil Poor.

“You guys didn’t win that! You guys didn’t win!”

I said, “Yeah. We did. We’re standing right in line with the flagman. Yeahhh, we did.”

“No you didn’t. No you didn’t!”

I said, “Well, come on over and we’ll find out.”

KO: Does Phil still argue that today?

Paul: He’s never said one word about that ever since. We went over there and they even replayed it back.

KO: It was close but I’m not sure just how close it was because I was able to see it on TV and it looked like Tony got it.

Paul: Well, it was close. It wasn’t much more than a foot. It was pretty close. That was really special

KO: So was there any special celebration? Did you go out to eat to bask in the glow or did you just drive home to get ready for a weekend of Gas City, Warsaw, and Kokomo?

Paul: I think it was just a lot of happiness going on at the track but then we headed for home. We had to get ready for the next one.

KO: Later that year, you and Tony beat the USAC guys again, this time at the Eldora Four Crown Nationals. I don’t know if you’d won there previously, because they had some unsanctioned shows there in the early ‘70s. Was that your first win at the Big E?

Paul: I think that was the first one. I’m pretty sure that was the first at Eldora. So that was special. Jack Hewitt was running second. That was still the afternoon, a daytime show. And the track was dry-slick. It was gone – you know. Jack’s right there. It’s nip and tuck. That’s another good thing you could say about Jack. All he would have had to done was just barely touch him and he could have won the race. But he didn’t. The whole last half of the race he ran right on our tail but never touched us.

KO: I don’t know if you bite your fingernails, but that would have been a time to do so.

Paul: Yeah. I’m sure I was working on them!

KO: The first one is always a big deal, speaking in regards to Santa Fe. But how do you compare the Eldora win to that? Were they equal?

Paul: It would be hard to compare. The Four Crown is a big name deal, very prestigious to win. And then you go back to Santa Fe, if it was the first USAC live race, that’s real special too.

KO: I wouldn’t want to debate which one was more important, because they are all important in the USAC ranks. So anyway, in 1988, pavement racing returned to the USAC schedule and I recall seeing the Hazen 57 a few times at IRP. I don’t know that I saw it at Winchester or Salem. Prior to that, there weren’t many pavement races around here once USAC dropped them from the schedule in the early ‘80s. Maybe the last time for you to run pavement prior to that might have been the Little 500. Would that have been a true statement?

Paul: Yeah, I think so. We just focused more on the dirt at that time. Phil Walker and I got together. He had the pavement car and I had the dirt car. We just kind of combined to run for points. Johnny Parsons, Jr., he was running it at Raceway Park at that time.

KO: I just remember seeing Tony run a few times early on in ’88. I think that JP deal was a little further on. I think Steve Reeves was in that timeframe with JP, probably about ’93 or so.

Paul: Ah, ok!

Nice Shot – Thomas Meseraull hauls the mail into Gas City’s east end. (Dave Merritt photo)

KO: But when you were hooked up with Phil Walker and the pavement, were you going to those races and helping out or did he do his deal and you did your deal on the dirt?

Paul: No, I had everything up here and I took care of both of them. I took ‘em to the track and we worked on ‘em together at the track.

KO: Staying with 1988, I even found some results where Tim Bookmiller was in your car at Kokomo. It was June 26, 1988 and he finished third. I’m not sure why Tim was in it and Tony wasn’t. Maybe Tony was running a Silver Crown race? It might have been Milwaukee? I was in Milwaukee that day.

(After checking www.openwheeltimes.com, Tony finished 26^th at Milwaukee in the Conroy 18.)

Paul: Tim Bookmiller. Hmmm. I remember a deal at Paragon, where we had ran Lawrenceburg the night before. Then we were going to run Paragon the next night. I got down there and I think Tim drove it that night. But anyway, I got down there and it came time to hot lap and I ain’t got no driver! Tim was there and I stuck him in there for hot laps. And pretty soon, we’re lined up to qualify, and I still ain’t got no driver. Well, they get three cars from pushing Tim off to qualify and here comes Tony, running up there with his helmet bag and everything.

“I…I’ll qualify.”

I said, “You just take the night off. You know, if you aren’t here at hot lap time, you take the night off.”

Well he wasn’t very happy over that. But you know what? He was never late again after that!

What really topped it off, if I knew it was a flat tire or something, it would have been a different story. But I knew what was going on. They went to King’s Island after Lawrenceburg and they didn’t leave King’s Island in time to go racing. So I figured, King’s Island must have been more important! But that’s the only deal I can remember with Tim. Like you said, Tony might have had a ride in a champ car or something. He did run Conroy’s car some when he ran for me.

KO: I remember a story you told Chris Hoyer about Jeff Gordon driving your car. I know you said it was kind of early in Jeff’s career, maybe ’85 or so when he was really only running Bloomington and Chillicothe, places that would let him run at an early age. What do you recall from that experience? I remember Chris telling me that you said that the kid knew what he was doing, even when he was so young.

Paul: Yeah, he was pretty impressive. He went out and hot lapped and came in and told me…he actually told me more information than I’ve had some experienced drivers tell me over the years. We kind of changed a few things. Of course his stepdad, John Bickford, was there, and we kind of worked together. He went out there for the heat race and you know, I can’t tell you what he did, but he did good enough to transfer into the feature. And they dropped the green on the feature, and he was going forward. To this day, I think he would have won the race, but he got tangled up. He didn’t have a chance. Two cars right in front of him got crossed up and he got tangled up with them. That ended the night.

KO: And that was a one-time only deal?

Paul: A one-time deal.

KO: At least from that experience, was that an eye opener, being that young and talented? You didn’t have a lot of kids running sprint cars back then. Now it’s a common thing.

Paul: Yeah. It sure was. Like I say, there was no doubt in my mind that he would have won that night. Just to jump in a strange car and go like that, being that young and everything…

KO: For that ’87 season, I may be wrong, but were you guys running a Challenger chassis?

Paul: Yeah, it was.

KO: I know that by ’89 you had a down-tube car and that was a Challenger. But that ’89 car, I could be wrong but that might have been the same car that got you through ’94, when Kevin Thomas was still driving. How ever many years that lasted, that must have been a special car and you liked it a lot.

Paul: Yeah, it was good. In fact, all of them Challengers were good. But that one there, it just seemed like it never quit working. As long as they keep working, don’t change!

KO: That’s the thing you liked best – it still held its adjustments?

Paul: Um-hmmm. I think one of them was a 39 inch motor plate. I had three of them. One of them was a 39. One was a 40. The last one, the one that Kevin drove, was a 41 inch motor plate. That’s kind of a funny story too.

Kevin never knew that, until halfway through the season or something. We got to talking one day about different cars. I said, “Well this car is a 41 inch motor plate.”

Kevin said, “There ain’t NO WAY IN HELL!”

I said, “I’m telling you, it’s a 41 inch motor plate.”

“No it ain’t! It can’t be! I’ve never been able to drive a 41 inch motor plate car.”

I said, “God damn it! Take this tape. I’ll hold the end down here and you stretch it out. You tell me what it reads.”

So he did. He said, “I can’t believe that!” So that’s another story.

And then, I’m not certain of this, but when he was driving for…

KO: I remember Doc Black. There was Chrisman. And of course there was Rodney Reynolds, because he had those Gambler cars built to the 41 inch configuration.

Paul: That’s kind of a funny deal. Whoever it was, it was right after he drove for me. It was a 41 inch car.

KO: I also remember Guy Applebee.

Paul: Guy Applebee. I think that’s who it was.

New Track Record – During qualifications for the Non-Winged World Championship in June of 2000 at Terre Haute, Jon Stanbrough makes a historic run into the 19-second bracket. (Randy Jones photo)

KO: They had those J&J cars from Frankie Kerr. I don’t know if Kerr liked the 41 inch cars, but it seemed like from that point on, from when he saw that tape measure readout, he had to have the 41 inch car. Kevin was a pretty particular guy.

Talking about 1989, Tony Elliott took an opportunity to run for Johnny Vance, who was pretty high up there in the ranks of USAC car owners at the time. Of course he used to be a USAC official and all that. That was probably a big deal for Tony, but how did you two leave things at the time? Was there ever a thought about getting back together again if that deal didn’t work out?

Paul: Well, what actually happened there - I had taken my wife up to the Mayo Clinic. And I think it was two weeks prior to the Four Crown. And we were there a little longer than we thought. We were a couple of days late getting back, a couple of days before the Four Crown. From the way I understood it, Tony got excited and thought I wasn’t going to make it back, so he started finding a ride, which was not a problem. Then I got back and I’m sitting there and I’ve got no driver. So that’s when I ended up getting Larry Rice. But you know, I never held anything against him. I can understand his thoughts on it.

KO: Talking about Larry Rice, even though it was only one race, what was it like to work with Larry? You’d worked with some veterans in the past of course. Was he as easy-going as everyone says? Did he have any special requests?

Paul: No. He was as easy-going as you’d ever want. However you wanted it was fine with him.

He said, “I’ll just drive it.”

KO: So you guys ended up sixth at the Four Crown – not too bad I guess.

Paul: For just jumping in and going at Eldora, that ain’t too bad.

KO: For 1990, you took a job with Anderson’s Larry Contos to take care of his sprint car. Steve Imel was the driver. Did you drive down to Anderson to work on the car or did you keep it at your shop?

Paul: No, I had it all up here.

KO: It had always been your car up until then. What was it like working on someone else’s stuff? Did you have a different philosophy? Were you working any other jobs at the time? I don’t know if you took a job after International closed down.

Paul: Well, I was doing automotive repair on the side, between my racing. I don’t know. I just used the same philosophy as on my own stuff. I tried to do as good of a job as I could. I didn’t have any problems with him.

KO: So was that Contos job taken to help pay for your wife’s trips to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota? Or, did you have a different reason for taking that deal?

Paul: Oh, I don’t know. Everybody kept telling me that you need to just work for somebody instead of trying to run your own stuff. I had not done that. This chance came up and I just gave it a whirl.

KO: Talking about the Mayo Clinic, how serious was the diagnosis in late ’89 and early ’90?

Paul: Well, basically they came up with a deal, they called it severe work syndrome. I guess what it is, is like in her job, it was a piecework deal, with several working together. They had so much they had to get out in eight hours to make X amount of dollars. This group, they all worked together good, but then they got to the point where they tried to make ten hours in eight hours and it kept multiplying.

I kept telling her, “You don’t need to do that.”

But anyhow, I guess that’s what they laid that onto. It was just from working too hard.

KO: When I hear of the Mayo Clinic, I always think of cancer and for some reason, I thought maybe she had some sort of cancer.

Paul: Oh, no.

KO: So it was kind of like chronic fatigue syndrome – really tired and really weak? And no one around here could figure it out, huh?

Paul: No. We went to all kinds of doctors around here. And that was another thing. They just kept adding medicine. Each doctor – different medicine. When we got up there, they took all that medicine away from her. They took it all away. That’s the first thing they did. I think they had her so screwed up, onto her other problems. She never really did get over that. She still, to this day, is chronic fatigued.

KO: If she went to a race with you, I’m sure she’d be sound asleep on the way home in the truck.

Paul: Yeah.

KO: How often did you go to Minnesota? Did you drive up there?

Paul: That was a one time deal. We went up there one time. I’m telling you. It’s unbelievable what they do up there at the Mayo Clinic. When you leave there, they know everything from the top of your body to the bottom, that’s wrong.

KO: How long of a stay was that?

Paul: About a week and a half.

KO: When she had her health problems, did your interest in racing take a hit? Maybe you thought that you didn’t need to be doing this? Or, did you always have that fire for racing?

Paul: Oh, it still kept burning. (laughing)

KO: Once it’s in there, it’s always there. I can attest to that!

Paul: Yeah.

KO: You raced with Steve and the facts show that you didn’t have the success. I’m not sure if he was the type of driver that you were used to, but what do you remember about the time with Steve?

Paul: Well, Steve is a great guy. He is a nice guy and everything. But you know, the whole thing started out – to my way of thinking – wanting to run with the All Stars. I mean, if you aren’t running good locally, you ain’t got no business being out there on the road. But that’s what they wanted to do – to run the All Stars.

KO: It sounded like they wanted to follow what Phil Poor and Jeff Stoops were doing that year.

Paul: I did my best with the deal, trying to do it. But it just wasn’t working out. It lasted about a year or so. But it got to the point where it was taking the zap out of me because I wasn’t used to going to the track and running B-mains, loading up, and going home. I wanted to run features you know. So it just got to the place where I went back on my own and did my own thing.

KO: I remember at the Four Crown in ’90 and I don’t know if you were working on the car, but I remember Robbie Stanley driving the Contos car. Were you wrenching on it then?

Paul: Yeah. Let’s see. Yeah. That was right at the end.

KO: Was that your choice about putting someone like him in the car?

Paul: I had talked to Larry about it. That was his first deal into sprint car racing. The way everything was going, I was afraid that he was going to drop out. He never made any intentions of that, but you see guys come in, spend a ton of money, and BOOM, they’re gone! I didn’t want that to happen.

So I talked to him and said, “Larry, you can’t be happy. You’ve spent a lot of money. You can’t be happy with the way things are going. If you think it’s me, I wouldn’t have a second thought if you changed. If you think it’s the driver, I think you need to change.” I said, “If you ask me, I’ll give you an honest opinion that I think you DO need to change your driver too.”

He said, “Oh no. I’m fine with everything. I don’t have a problem with anything. As far as the driver, I want to have a local driver.”

I said, “Oh-kayyyyy…”

Modified Madness – As a driver, Paul won a Warsaw Speedway modified championship in 1965. This is what a modified looked like back then. (Paul Hazen photo)

KO: With Robbie in the car, I think he did fairly well that day. I’d have to check the results. (He actually ended up 11^th.)

Paul: I had talked to him (Larry) and had mentioned Robbie to him a few different times and said he’s an all-around racer. He can run asphalt and he can run dirt. Well, Larry was talking to somebody down there in Anderson. Larry called me and said so and so said Robbie can’t drive asphalt.

I said, “Oh, is that right? Well, you better tell this guy to be checking a little more because he just set a track record down in Florida this past winter.”

KO: At Volusia! That was one fast track for the winged cars on pavement.

Paul: Yeah. He said, “Really?”

And I said, “Yeah.”

So anyhow, you know, I never tried to get in any down and out arguments. I tried to play it cool. So right there at the end, he did put Robbie in the car. In fact, he had qualified for the Little 500 or something.

KO: Yep. At least in ’94, he was set to drive for Larry at the Little 5 and of course didn’t get to run that race. Maybe it was just the Emge 50? I have a photo of him sitting on the left rear of that car.

Paul: I’ve got to back up here a little (chuckling). Robbie never got to drive the car while I was working on it. I was wrong on that. I had already left. But what I’d been saying must have stuck in his head. I was tickled to see him get in the car.

KO: That kind of answered my next question. I didn’t remember seeing the Hazen 57 in 1991 and wondered if you were still with Contos that year. Donnie Adams, another local driver, took over. So what ended the deal with you and Larry? Was it just the fact that he wasn’t going to change anything and you were used to running A-mains and not B-mains?

Paul: Yeah, that’s pretty much it. I wanted to get back into the part of it that I liked.

KO: By my record, the next time you came back was for the ’92 season. My memory is pretty good for that time and I wonder what you would have been doing during 1991.

Paul: We had a death – my wife’s father died. He had a small business, like a mini junkyard. That’s what I did all summer. I cleaned that mess up. It kept me busy all summer long, about eight hours a day. I didn’t get to race any that summer.

KO: The next question I have written down here is kind of dumb – what made you want to come back? I think you always wanted to be back racing, right? You never lost the fire.

Paul: Right.

KO: So I’m guessing it would have been with the same equipment as when you last ran in ’89?

Paul: Yep. It was the same thing.

KO: So by ’92, things were a little different than ’89. Tracks did not exist in Warsaw or Gas City, places that were fairly close to home. So that meant that a lot more travel was involved to race on Fridays and Saturdays. Did this mean that you needed a better truck to make those trips to Putnamville? Or did you have the same truck?

Paul: 1992. Let’s see. Ford? I got a Ford three-quarter ton truck and converted it into a dually.

KO: Building that truck up, was that solely for the longer hauls? Of course Warsaw was awfully close. What did it take to get there from here, about twenty minutes?

Paul: Yeah. About twenty or thirty minutes.

KO: Gas City – what was that, about an hour?

Paul: About forty-five minutes.

KO: So a lot more travel was involved and you’re going to Putnamville much more frequently. You’ve got a guy named Kevin Thomas driving, who obviously was well known around these parts. And, you had Robbie Stanley driving later that season. How did that deal come about with two drivers in your car? I can’t imagine two drivers wanting to share a ride.

Paul: (Chuckling) Well, Kevin was the driver. He was the main driver. I think that’s when he got his arm or wrist broken at Paragon in a little scuffle deal. Anyhow, about the same time, Robbie was running USAC for the points and his asphalt car, they owned it and were doing good with it. But, he was struggling with whoever he was driving for on the dirt. He was leading the points, but just barely. He’d make points on asphalt, but lose them on the dirt. So he got a hold of me and we talked the situation over. He was wanting to drive for me, and I needed a driver at that point. So, we just agreed to finish the year out with him on the USAC-only stuff. Then when Kevin got back going again, why he drove on the dirt.

KO: And that was a pretty good year for you. Very early in the year, almost right out of the box, you won with KT at Putnamville. Then you were third against the CRA at Brownstown, which is the race that Joe Roush won. Did KT and Tony Elliott have similar setups, from what you recall?

Paul: Yeah, they were pretty close. They both ran inside weight. They both liked that.

KO: Was Kevin more particular than Tony?

Paul: He was a little more particular. Of course I think Kevin, at that time, he’d been around for quite a while. He kind of probably had a little more knowledge on the setup than Tony did, at that time.

KO: So did you ever really butt heads on the setups with Kevin, or did he go with what you wanted?

Paul: We pretty much got along ok that way. Once in a great while, he might think something different than I was. But I usually just kind of let it slide and went his way and it worked out!

KO: By my records here, my 1992 statistics show 10 wins with KT and 1 with Robbie. At least out of the 31 starts with KT on paper here, 28 times you finished inside of the top-five, and no times did you ever finish outside of the top ten. That’s outstanding! With KT, you got wins at Paragon, Kokomo, Putnamville, Haubstadt, Lawrenceburg, and Bloomington. That’s pretty much all the tracks in Indiana at the time. The Lawrenceburg win was Kevin’s first in USAC, beating Dave Darland, who was running Goacher’s car, in a thriller. 1992 was a great season with two great drivers. Do you still have any particularly fond memories from that season?

Paul: Well, sometimes you get in that kind of a rhythm and you think, “MAN, is this EVER gonna quit?” Although you know it’s gonna, you keep thinking, “Man, I hope this never quits!” That’s kind of one of them years, you know. Everything was clicking pretty good.

KO: I had previously thought that you worked with Robbie at the ’90 Four Crown, but we cleared that up earlier. But in your seven starts with Stanley in the ’92 season, an 8^th place at the Four Crown was the worst finish, and the track was extremely hard to pass on that day. How different was it working with Robbie as opposed to Kevin? Which driver was more enjoyable to work with, in your opinion?

Paul: Hmmm, that’s kind of tough. You know, I don’t remember really. I couldn’t say one over the other as far as more enjoyable. They both were good to work with. They both were experienced. They both knew what they wanted.

KO: I never remember Robbie being too high-strung or getting too upset about anything. And that worked out for him, because your ride helped him win the USAC championship that year. Talk a little about contributing to a USAC championship. Did you get to go to the banquet?

Paul: Yeah. We got to go to the banquet. You know, that was quite an experience. That was really an enjoyable time. It just really felt good about helping him out, helping him through that.

Matching Uniforms - Including the late Jim Bennett and son Brandon, the Hazen team looks good while standing in Paragon’s USAC victory lane on 6/4/94. (John Mahoney photo)

KO: Moving on to ’93, I know Robbie got a ride with the Hoffmans, but maybe before that ride came about, was he already trying to work on a full-time deal with you?

Paul: Yeah, before he went to the Hoffmans, he had contacted me and wanted to work a deal out where we could run the whole deal together.

KO: And what did you tell him?

Paul: I said, “I’d love to Robbie, but there’s no way I could do it. The asphalt would break me up in a minute.”

Brand new tires every time you’d go, there’d have been no way that I could do it.

KO: And then he got the Hoffman deal…I think KT moved on to Doc Black’s team for 1993. After such an awesome ’92 season, why didn’t you two stick together? Was he getting a higher percentage? It’s hard to imagine that you could have had better results.

Paul: You know, I don’t know. I can’t even remember what the deal was there. I don’t have a clue as to what happened.

KO: Maybe he was mad that you had Robbie in the car?

Paul: I don’t really remember. The only thing that I can come up with maybe being – Doc Black – maybe he’s got more money to work with? I don’t know. These drivers are funny sometimes. The grass looks greener on the other side of the fence.

KO: Doc Black, being in Greencastle, that’s a lot closer to his house in Danville.

So as I said, Robbie landed the ride with the Hoffman 69 and KT went with Doc Black, so you needed a driver. Brad Marvel was the next guy to fill the seat. You and Brad had some decent runs at Putnamville and Kokomo, but no wins to show for your efforts. Why didn’t it work better with Brad?

Paul: Mmm, we just never really clicked like the guys before. We never really thought the same on our setups and stuff.

KO: Also for the ’93 season, I believe you had a partnership with Phil Walker for the USAC sprint car championship. In the pavement car, Tim Champlin and Johnny Parsons were two of the drivers, not to mention Stevie Reeves. Stevie drove the car on the 4^th of July at Winchester. Coming to the finish, Steve Butler connected with him, crashing them both on the front stretch. Things were very, very heated in the pit area afterwards.

Paul: Oh…Winchester!

KO: Yeah! Were you there that day and were you involved in that mess?

Paul: Oh yeah.

KO: Was your wife there that day?

Paul: Oh yeah!

KO: Was that her yelling?

Paul: Oh yeah!

Iron Man – After flipping, losing his glass eye, and restarting from the rear, Jim Elliott still came back to win this 1972 Warsaw Speedway feature. (Paul Hazen photo)

KO: I was down in that pit area and it seemed pretty loud.

Paul: (Laughing) Oh YEAH! You were there?

KO: I was there!

Paul: That was probably as mad, out of my mind, that I’ve ever been.

KO: You guys were running third or fourth and that might have been one of the first times Stevie was in the car. But anyway, that was a good day and it got ruined. What were your thoughts afterwards, when it was all heated?

Paul: (Laughing)

KO: Feel free to open up! This is the internet. You don’t have to worry about offending anybody.

Paul: No, I was just completely out of it. I don’t know. At that point, I probably could have choked Steve to death, if I could have got a hold of him.

KO: And what was your wife saying?

Paul: I don’t remember her exact words, but I know they weren’t pleasant.

KO: That was an interesting time, because not too long after that was the big deal at Terre Haute with Butler again. He got suspended for Lawrenceburg and the week following that was Terre Haute where he tried the double-slide job and flipped Bill Rose out of the track. I was in the pit area again for that one and it was like mass chaos. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that many people, that mad about one thing. I’m guessing you had your car at Terre Haute that day. Do you remember that?

Paul: Oh yeah!

KO: It was like a lynch mob!

Paul: That’s what I thought! That’s exactly what I said. I think they had put some kind of penalty on him for that deal at Winchester.

KO: Yep, because they made him sit out Lawrenceburg. His first race back was Terre Haute. I just wondered if you were involved in that in any way and what your thoughts were at that time.

Paul: I didn’t get involved in the one at Terre Haute. I’d seen it all going on and everything. Jack Hewitt got him out of there on the four wheeler or I ain’t too sure that he wouldn’t have been in bad trouble!

KO: Going back to that 2003 season and your partnership with Phil Walker, do you care to say anything about him on record?

Paul: I think I’d pass.

KO: Not a problem. You are a man of few words and those few words might be enough. It sounds like there is a story there that does not need to go on record. Maybe you can tell me when this recorder is off.

So anyway, in looking at these statistics once again, you and Tony Elliott reunited for the first time in a long while at Kokomo on June 13^th of ’93, finishing 5^th. You also got together at Kokomo twice in August, getting one win. It’s a good thing for these records, because I would not have remembered the dates. What got you two back together after so many years of being apart? Of course they were just local shows and Tony was running for Dick Newkirk, and Newkirk didn’t run a lot of the local stuff, but maybe you were in between drivers?

Paul: I think it was probably just needing a driver and knew we’d done good the first time around. I figured I’d give it another shot.

KO: History has shown that you and your drivers never seem to burn any bridges. It seems like a lot of times, when there are car owner and driver breakups, they are permanent divorces. Why is it that when you part ways, there is always a possibility of getting back together? Do you just not get mad?

Paul: Well, if you’re going along and you see things aren’t working good or you see this little agitation starting, I’ll say, “We’re friends. Why don’t we forget it, give it up, split, take a break? We’re friends, that way we can still be friends instead of getting mad at each other and blowing up.“

That’s kind of the way I’ve always looked at it.

KO: For the rest of 1993, you had Johnny Parsons in the car for Eldora, Chillicothe, and Sedalia. You also had Reeves in the car for Bloomington’s Sheldon Kinser Memorial and the Four Crown. How different was it working with a veteran like Parsons, who had been around before cages were mandatory, and a guy like Reeves, who had not run a wingless sprinter very much? Which did you prefer, veterans who take care of the equipment or younger shoes who gas it up? Maybe you wanted both but if you had to pick between the two, would you lean towards the veterans?

Paul: Well, yeah. Johnny was real good. He did us a real good job. You talk about a guy who was hard to work with. He’s hard to work with! But, you got results. As long as you get results, that’s what you’re after.

KO: What made Johnny hard to work with, out of curiosity?

Paul: Just his ideas, you know? He’d get an idea and then he’d change it. We were up at Berlin, Michigan, one time, an asphalt track and I mean it was hotter than all get out. It was a USAC race. And we’re trying to get a left rear tire to get the stagger for what he wants. And them left rear asphalt tires, they’re not like dirt tires to mount and unmount. So anyhow, we’re working our tail off. We get a tire mounted. We blow it up. And about the time we get it blowed up and find out what size it is, this is the second time around - the one on the car didn’t suit him – well, he decided he didn’t need that diameter. He needed one bigger.

So now we’re going to our third one, and we’re wringing wet, and we’re unmounting this thing and mounting this third tire up and pretty soon John comes back over and says, “Hey! That tire ain’t going to work. We need to go…”

I said, “JOHN! GOD DAMN! MAKE YOUR MIND UP! This is our third damned tire and we ain’t even hit the track yet!”

(Laughing) So anyhow, the last one, he decided, whether it was right or wrong, but that’s the one he stayed with. (Laughing)

KO: So he had a hard time making his mind up…

Paul: Yeah, yeah.

Kokomo KISS – All-time King of Indiana Sprint Series feature winner and 2003 champ Jon Stanbrough at Kokomo in July of 2002. (Randy Jones photo)

KO: So for ’94, you’re back with Kevin Thomas again and that’s really no surprise given your previous success together. I think you even had some Valvoline colors on the car. KT had the deal with Doc Black the previous year and like you said, maybe the grass isn’t always greener. I don’t know how that deal came about. I’m just wondering who called who.

Paul: You know, I can’t remember for sure. I’m trying to picture that in my mind with the Valvoline deal. I don’t know whether he picked that up. I think he picked that Valvoline deal up. He may have gotten in contact with me. I just don’t know for sure.

KO: Do you know how much that Valvoline deal was worth? Was it mainly product?

Paul: It was mainly product. Anything in lubricant. Anything that they had. And, alcohol was with it.

KO: Had you been using Valvoline before that time?

Paul: Uhhh, no! Kendall. (Laughing)

KO: So you switched…free oil!

Paul: Yep.

KO: Do you change your oil every other race?

Paul: Well, at least once every weekend. Of course the bigger deal was the alcohol. You go down there with barrels. I put a bunch of barrels in the trailer, go down there, fill ‘em up and come back. The alcohol was a big thing. Of course the oil is too when you figure every week, you know. It’s about every week where you’ve got to change it. That’s about thirty bucks a whack.

KO: Not a bad deal for the time then – worthy of sticking the decals on the car and painting them up. You even had matching dirt and pavement cars.

Paul: Oh yeah.

KO: After a couple of wins at Kokomo in early 1994, you and Kevin won a USAC race at Paragon in June. Then at the end of June, I remember KT ran for Steve Chrisman at Eldora and by the end of July, he was full-time with Chrisman. I’m not sure if that’s why you decided to split up, but regardless, Kent Christian was your next driver. Was there something that didn’t work between you and Kevin Thomas, because from the outside it seemed like a fairly potent combination.

Paul: I think the reason he went with Chrisman was because he had the asphalt and the dirt.

KO: Maybe you were slowly getting out of the asphalt?

Paul: Yeah. I was dissolving the asphalt thing. So I was only going to have dirt left. He was running for the USAC points at that time. So then we ran Kent.

KO: Can you say anything about Kent Christian as a driver? I know you ran some USAC stuff with him. Of course he had been around since the early ‘80s and had established his name as a solid driver, but he hadn’t solidified himself as a consistent winner just yet. Anything you remember about Kent being in the car?

Paul: Not a lot. We ran good. I don’t know if he had much in wins at that time.

KO: The few races I have on record show: 9^th at I-96, Chillicothe 12^th, then Tony was in the car a couple of times, then Kent ran 4^th at that big Racin’ with D.O. $7500-to-win race at Bloomington. Nothing really stands out too much then?

Paul: No. Kent was nice to work with – no problems there.

KO: Staying with ’94, I remember some Sunday nights late in the season when Tony Elliott got a couple of wins in your car at Kokomo, although my memory is getting a little foggy too. You got back together full-time for ’95 but I have to wonder if those wins were the big reason why you two reunited once again.

Paul: That probably had a lot to do with it. He got in right there at the end of the year and ran real good. I was probably needing a driver again.

KO: For ’95, Tony got Bud’s Auto Sales sponsorship and then you got the G.W. Pierce sponsorship. But it was a great year for you two - ten wins altogether and seven of them came at Kokomo, including one with USAC. Tony started with you back in ’81 when he was a lot wilder and wet behind the ears. Then he settled down into a consistent winner in the mid to late ‘80s. When he got back with you in ’95, had he matured any compared to ’88 or ’89? Did you see any difference?

Paul: Yeah, I think probably by the ’95 deal he had matured quite a bit. There’s a little story in there too. Of course, right in that time era, we were running good enough, pretty consistently with Bobby Kinser. But we were having trouble beating him. We were at Putnamville. I take that back, the night before, I don’t know where we were at for sure, but anyhow Tony and Bobby had touched wheels. You know it was all just racing stuff – it was not intentional.

KO: That’s trouble.

Paul: Yeah. I don’t know if anyone even spun out or anything like that. But anyhow, Bobby came over after the race. He told Tony (pointing), “That was your first mistake! That’s all you get.”

“Ok.”

No more argument. So we go to Putnamville the next night. And low and behold, what do you think happened?

Cursed Car – Casey Shuman steers Paul’s ill-fated Stealth 2K4 chassis during July 2005 Gas City USAC action. (Randy Jones photo)

KO: They somehow got together?

Paul: They got together. (Laughing) I think Bobby ended up spun out. So anyhow, when the race was over, we’re loading the car. Tony’s up in the trailer changing his uniform. Here comes Bobby. Bobby walks over, as he’s getting up to the car and said, “Is Tony around?”

“Yeah, he’s up there changing his uniform.”

He just stood there at the bottom of the ramp. Pretty soon Tony comes walking out. Bobby never said one word. He’s just standing there. He starts like this, with his fist. Tony ducked and Bobby went around like this (laughing). And that’s all there was to it. He had that big cigar in his mouth, you know he’s standing there. He just looked at him, turned around, and walked off.

And you know, from that day on, not every time, but we beat him pretty consistently. And that’s what Tony had in him that I noticed a lot of drivers don’t. The more you push him, the more he’s going to push himself. In other words, by Bobby doing that, he said, “Ok, I’m going to beat you now – even more – and not touch you.” And he did. They’d run close together.

KO: So he never got a hand on Tony?

Paul: Never got a hand on him. We had the same thing happen with Sheldon Kinser. Not the same thing, but similar. That was at Putnamville and that’s when USAC ran that western series that started at Putnamville and then they went on out west. Well, they’re out there running the feature and here’s Sheldon. And to me, to this day, I’d say Sheldon was dead wrong. But it don’t matter, you know? But anyhow, Sheldon came inside of Tony and went up and over the left front wheel and went on – drove over him. And it tore the radius rod loose on the left front. And we’re up there running in the top four or five. Well, when it did that, it’s just going to turn left – pull the axle back and go into the infield. So Tony’s in the infield, setting. After the races were over, Tony walks over to Sheldon.

KO: Sheldon’s a big guy…

Paul: Sheldon’s a big guy! He’s starting over that way and I’m like, “Where the hell is he going?” He’s going over to talk to Sheldon and I go, “Oh shit!”

So he went over. I didn’t go over. I stayed out of it. But he went over and Roger Brandon, he was helping at the time, he went over there with him. Tony said, “What the hell do you think you’re doing out there?”

And the answer I got was, “Hey kid. When you learn how to drive a god-damned sprint car, you can come over and raise hell with me. Until that time, DON’T DO IT!”

I guess that was the end of the conversation. The next night, wherever the next track was…I think it was Terre Haute. I think so. We’re down there and Sheldon’s up ahead. And here comes Tony. He came up and went clear up into the high shit and went right on by him and walked away.

When they came in afterwards, Sheldon came over and said, “Hey kid. I think you learned how to drive a sprint car! If you’ve got any complaints, just let me know!”

But that’s just the way he was, you know? Somebody might give him a little crap and he becomes more determined.

KO: Talking about the ten wins in that ’95 season, I think that was a new car, maybe a Competition Welding?

Paul: I think you’re right. That was the early Competition car. I had two or three of them.

KO: I’m guessing still a steel block engine, right?

Paul: Um-hmm.

KO: I don’t know if you can pinpoint a reason why you and Tony were so good in ’95. Obviously you had all those years together and maybe that experience was the key. I don’t know if you learned some stuff along the way to make you better?

Paul: I think we were able to step the engine program up there too. There at one time, we were running pretty much 400 blocks and a lot of times with cast iron cranks in them. You know. I think right about that time was where we could put the aftermarket steel cranks and good stuff in ‘em to crank ‘em up harder.

KO: For ’96, Elliott got the Dick Fuller deal to run for the USAC championship. The STL deal. You had new sponsorship from Franklin Power Products and Tray House was your driver. But by Sprintweek in July, Tony Elliott was back in the car. Was it hard to click with Tray? Tray was a hands-on guy and he was used to doing things his way. Did that make it difficult between you two?

Paul: I think it did. His thoughts were somewhat different than mine were. It was hard to click together. It wasn’t working out good. Instead of fighting it…

KO: Let’s just part ways and maybe we can get back together later? Was it mainly not agreeing on what things you needed to do with the car?

Paul: Yeah.

KO: Tray was a guy who liked to run the top and Tony liked to run the bottom and that’s generally two different setups.

Paul: Right.

KO: Staying with the ’96 season, once back with Tony you guys immediately got 2^nd at Bloomington, 5^th at Paragon, and 6^th at Kokomo during Indiana Sprintweek. You collected wins at Kokomo and Gas City – that’s when Gas City reopened again. You also towed out to Williams Grove, getting a third in the USAC race there. As a car owner, was that your first race at The Grove?

Paul: Yes. Was that a third? I thought it was second.

KO: Let me check. Billy Pauch won it. Lance Dewease stole second at the end.

Paul: Oh, ok! Pauch won? We would have been third then. I was thinking Dewease won it.

KO: Pauch ended up winning it and Darland had it won but he biked it and dumped in turn one. A lot of people crashed that night.

Paul: Didn’t Marvel get hurt that night?

KO: Yes he did. A lot of people tore up stuff.

Paul: They had a caution towards the end. I know that’s what caused Dewease to get by us. Them guys that run there, that’s their local track and they knew what they could get by with. You could still change a right rear tire at that time – compound-wise. Well we had a hard compound on. He (Lance) came over afterwards and he said, “If we hadn’t had that red flag, there’d have been no way I could have got by you. I put a softer tire on.”

That was a pretty special race too.

Early Success – Nearly right off the bat, Paul and Tony Elliott shared some success together at Warsaw Speedway. This looks to be 1982 or so. (Paul Hazen photo)

KO: Was that the first time you’d been there?

Paul: Right. Yeah.

KO: Kind of a thrill?

Paul: Oh yeah. That was a thrill running with them guys.

KO: Was that the furthest east you’d towed your racecar?

Paul: Yes. Uh-huh.

KO: Even though highway 30 is very close to your house, I’m guessing you didn’t take the Lincoln Highway to get there.

Paul: I don’t think so! I don’t remember what route we did take. Tim Bookmiller went with me and he brought it up on the computer somehow. I don’t even remember how we went.

KO: I’ve been out there a few times before and went interstate 70 and the turnpike. But one time my dad and I decided to exit at U.S. 30 and took the scenic route through Gettysburg, which was pretty cool.

Paul: I know we went through a big, long tunnel somewhere and I thought, “Jesus!”

KO: A third at The Grove with a steel block…I wonder when the last time someone got third there with a steel block in a big-time sprint car race?

Paul: Um-hmmm.

KO: I’d say those long straights pushed it to the limit.

Paul: Yeah. We did.

KO: 1997 - you again started the season with Elliott. But on May 10^th, Dave Darland was in your car at Putnamville. I don’t know how that deal came about. Maybe Tony was racing somewhere else. It just seemed kind of odd because those two were almost bitter rivals. And yet you had Darland in the car. Would you happen to remember why that opportunity came about?

Paul: Hmmm. I don’t remember how that came about. Dave ran champ cars too, just like Tony. Unless Tony was running a midget and maybe Dave didn’t have a midget ride at that time. I don’t know!

KO: Anyway, Darland was in the car. Dave isn’t a guy to be too picky with setups. As long as it goes fast, he’ll just drive it. Is there anything you did to your racecar to compensate for his driving style?

Paul: Not really. I pretty much just set it up like we’d been running it. I’d talked to him about it and he said, “As long as the right front’s stiff, I don’t care how the rest of it is.” In other words, he didn’t want it sinking on the right front to get into a flip. He never really requested much any time he drove.

KO: Dave and Tony were of course strong rivals. When one guy wasn’t winning, the other guy was. Afterwards, did Tony ever say anything to you about Dave being in the car?

Paul: No, I don’t remember that he ever said anything.

KO: You had raced against Dave, going way back to the early 1980s in Warsaw and Kokomo. As he became a consistent threat to win in the early ‘90s and before he got in your car, what did you think about him as a competitor?

Paul: Tough. (Laughing) You know, he was good. He was a pretty strong competitor, really.

KO: Clean racer.

Paul: Oh yeah. I never had any problems with his driving. I always thought he did a good, clean job.

KO: Being able to race with him and get that win, kind of a neat deal I’d imagine? Here again, you’ve got a different driver in your car and you win, showing the strength of your car and your abilities.

Paul: Oh yeah!

KO: For some reason, 1997 wasn’t a great year for you and Tony. You got a couple of wins at Kokomo in early July, but by the time Sprintweek rolled around Tony went with Jeff Walker. I don’t know if you remembered what happened this time around, but Tony hasn’t been back ever since. Were things starting to get heated and you decided to part ways before you became enemies?

Paul: No, we still talk. We still get along. I don’t remember what did happen, for sure. It was one of them deals – we needed to get apart. There was something there that was aggravating me. I don’t remember what it was.

KO: Has Tony called about a ride since then?

Paul: No. He had a friend and his friend called me last summer and wanted me to give him a chance back in the car again. And that’s right after I’d put Thomas (Meseraull) in. But other than that, nope.

KO: For the rest of ’97, you tried out a bunch of different drivers. Russ Gamester, Brian Tyler, and Aaron Mosley. Did I also remember Bill Tyler at Eldora?

Paul: Yep.

KO: And was it a nasty crash?

Paul: Yep.

KO: On that TV race?

Paul: Yep.

KO: And did it wipe out a car?

Paul: Yep.

KO: (Laughing) So you remember that quite vividly?

Paul: That was the LAST Competition Welding car I had. There again, that’s back into driver. Nobody could be successful in it. It just wasn’t a good car. The bad thing was, the year that I had them built, the winter before, I had went down to Bob at Competition Welding and really worked a super deal with him on one. It was a good deal. Well, when we got everything settled on one, I said, “Can you build me two like that?”

He said, “You son of a gun! I knew you was going to do that!”

But anyhow, he built me two of them. When Bill crashed this one, I had fought that thing all year long. I had it tore apart and back together so many times you wouldn’t believe it, trying to figure out what was wrong with it. And over there at Eldora, Bill crashed that thing and he come back into the pits and he was really feeling bad about it. I said, “Bill, as long as you didn’t get hurt, don’t give it a second thought. That damn thing is trying to kill me. Hell, it’s out of my hair now!”

So anyhow, I thought I’ll go home and put the other one together and things are going to be good now. Wrong! It was just like the other one. So I had two of ‘em built at the same time and neither one of them was worth a crap. And Bill Rose had one. Tony Ploughe had one. There was six of ‘em built in the same batch of tubing and none of ‘em were worth a darn.

Familiar Photo - Paul’s first sprint car, registered with USAC for 1967 as evidenced by the decal in the upper left corner, was the picture I stared at all day long during this interview.

KO: So it was just the steel?

Paul: That’s the only thing I can figure.

KO: I don’t know if I remember right, but I thought I recalled Ted Hines, up at Kokomo, an end of the season deal, ending on the wrecker.

Paul: One time. Yeah, it was one of them deals. Kokomo – down at the far end – at that time, before they had redone the track – when it was wet, early, if you got too high, it would just suck you right in.

KO: Off camber.

Paul: It would suck you right into the wall. I’m telling Ted this. He hadn’t run there much, hardly at all. I’m telling him this before he goes out.

“Whatever you do, take it easy! Don’t get up too high down there on that end.”

I’ll be a son of a bitch! They dropped that green flag and wahhhhhhhhhh-ahhhhhhhhh – down there and FLOP, BAM!

He tore that thing ALL TO HELL. I said, “I don’t need no more of this!”

KO: In that stretch, you might have gotten a win with Brian Tyler at Gas City, didn’t you?

Paul: Yeah.

KO: Was he fun to work with? He’s a pretty old-school type racer.

Paul: Yeah. His theory was, “Let’s go play.”

KO: Any time at the race track is a good time!

Paul: Yep.

KO: But that was a rough year for you. You got out of it completely after the ’97 season. Why did you decide to give it up? Was it the bad luck from that season or were you trying to regroup and maybe get some better stuff the next time around? Did you sell out completely? I guess not completely because you still have the trailer.

Paul: I kept the trailer but I did sell a lot of stuff out. I took a lot of stuff over to Fremont. I think at that time, I was pretty much ready to hang it, you know.

KO: Not having any fun?

Paul: Um-hmm. Those two cars pretty well whipped me.

KO: I’m sure you had to be tired – the mental drain of trying to figure it out. Good thing you didn’t have to go to Mayo because of that!

Paul: (Laughing) Yep!

KO: Did you go to any races in ’98? You sold most of your stuff, but did you go to any races? Did you miss the racing scene?

Paul: I remember going to Kokomo a couple, two or three times. Maybe Gas City. I think I went down there a couple of times. I didn’t go a lot. Not a lot. But I did miss it, yeah.

KO: How soon did you start planning to come back?

Paul: Uhhh, I think it pretty well took the whole summer. Pretty much. And then I kept thinking, thinking, and thinking. Finally, I said, “Eh. I gotta do it!”

KO: For 1999, you acquired what I believe to be your first aluminum block engine. Talk about that engine, because when you first had it, it was pretty stout. Was it extra special for its day? Did you get that from Doc Black?

Paul: Yeah, I was going to say, that motor came from Doc Black when he retired. I don’t know how long he’d had it, but it wasn’t what you’d call a new motor by any means. It had been around. I got a good deal on it. It’d run. It was an old combination, but it would go great. I think that was another thing back to before. I kept looking at the situation – we’d run these iron blocks for a long time against aluminum blocks and at that point, I thought to myself that I can’t afford to do this no longer. And then this deal came up on this aluminum motor with a real good price on it. That’s kind of what got me back going again.

KO: Relating to that purchase, were you like a proud father with a newborn child? You’ve got a daughter, but was this the son you never had?

Paul: Probably! Yeah. I’d say so!

Father and Son – A young Tony Elliott poses with his dad after yet another Warsaw score in the Hazen 57. (Paul Hazen photo)

KO: I’m guessing you were pretty proud of that thing.

Paul: Yeah I was.

KO: You babied it and took care of it.

Paul: I was proud of it but scared to death that I was going to hurt it. Yeah, I took care of it.

KO: How long did you have that engine? Do you still have it now?

Paul: Actually, the combination that we’re running now is the exact combination that was in that motor. Now most all of it has been changed, but it’s still the same combination.

KO: Bore? Stroke?

Paul: Bore. Stroke. Well, the heads are different. The block is different.

KO: Cam?

Paul: The cam’s the same. All the stuff that makes the power is the same.

KO: It seemed to work pretty well on all kinds of racetracks, half-miles especially.

Paul: Um-hmmm. And it’s old! Dick makes that remark every once in awhile.

He said, “You know, these guys don’t understand. You’ve gotta come out with new stuff all the time or they ain’t gonna sell nothin’.”

KO: So do you still have the block, somewhere?

Paul: Well, the block, two years ago I had to get a new block. It’s down at Dick’s. He’s gonna try to repair it - just ain’t never done it.

KO: For a chassis, you also acquired a 1994 Stealth, which I think was an ex-Boyce Holt car. Maybe a 39 inch car? I don’t know what differences and difficulties you had with that car and the aluminum block, because it was a totally new deal for you, different from what you were used to running. Did you have to completely relearn your setups?

Paul: Yeah. You had to change it a little because of the 39 inch deal, you know?

KO: Aluminum block – any difference on that deal?

Paul: Yeah. It made a difference on that deal too. It was one of them, that early on in the season, you had to be pretty careful on what you did with it, because it would get on the right rear real easy. But as you got into the summer and the tracks got drier and slicker, then it was great.

Back to that again, that’s another thing that got me back in, between the motor deal and this chassis deal. I went down there and looked at that chassis. I’d seen it in Speed Sport. I went down there and looked at it. I spent some time there. I don’t remember what the prices were anymore, but anyhow he told me what he wanted for it.

“I can’t do that, you know?”

So anyhow, before I left, I gave him a price and I said if you change your mind, I’ll go this, but that’s it. I knew he’d never do it, you know?

Low and behold, a week later he called me on the phone and he said, “If you want this car for what you said you’d give for it, come down and get it.”

I thought, “Well holy shit! How do I tell the guy no? I don’t want it now.”

So, I thought, “Well here I am. I’m back in it again!”

Between that and the motor. I think the car came first and then the motor.

KO: Did you have something working with Tracy Hines in the months leading up to the ’99 season? I know Tracy drove it once at Bloomington in August of ’99 and got second in a USAC race. But did Tracy try and work a deal with you before the ’99 season?

Paul: The time that he did drive it, it was just a fill-in deal. It was just for one night. That’s about all I can remember about Tracy.

KO: How did you end up with Jay Drake as your driver? He was a midget guy and he’d driven a little bit of sprint car stuff. I remember he got banged up in the Booe Brothers car at Terre Haute the year before and he got a win at Perris. But he really didn’t have a lot of sprint car seat time. How did you choose Jay?

Paul: I think at that point I just needed a driver. I called him and I guess he was hunting for something so we just hooked up.

KO: I think you two were fast but you never got the results. One of the last shows that I remember was the TV show at Eldora and you guys missed the A-main. Obviously you weren’t getting the wins and it had to be frustrating for both sides. I wondered what ended it.

Paul: Like you said, he was fast. He was pretty good in the car, but man he was tough on it!

Chalk made the remark one night and he said, “You know, you ought to start buying these Jacobs ladders by the dozen.”

Just one right after the other, these Jacobs ladders. That’s not a big thing, but still. It’s a pain in the ass. You’re knocking things out of square every time you hit. I don’t know.

Have you got the last time he ran with me as Eldora? I think it was Kokomo. I think he crashed big time.

KO: Let me check. I don’t even think he made the show at Eldora. It was in the B-main. Kokomo – Vince Osman Memorial – there’s a USAC race where he got 20^th.

Paul: Yeah, he crashed big time down there and I don’t remember the particulars on it but whatever happened didn’t go down very good with me and I pulled the plug.

Feature Wins – I count at least a dozen feature victory decals on Hazen’s 1987 Challenger chassis, driven of course by Tony Elliott. (Paul Hazen photo)

KO: The last finish I can find in the results was 7^th at Gas City on the Friday of Labor Day weekend. Maybe there was a Kokomo race on that Sunday night? Maybe that was it? The sheets I have only give the A-main results.

Paul: After the Kokomo race, he didn’t run anymore.

KO: By early September, Jon Stanbrough was your new driver. A year before, he was nearly out of the sport. He pretty much had quit. But then he came back in ’99 and was running his own car and he ran a few times for Chris Hoyer. Jon was probably off the radar for most owners at this time, but yet you saw something in him, enough to take a chance on him. What did you see in him that led to his hiring?

Paul: Oh. I’d watched him some, off and on. And then again, I was needing something to happen there towards the end of the year. But anyhow, I was needing a driver to fill in pretty quick. I just didn’t have nobody. I guess I was just looking through names I had - possibilities. I run across him and I gave him a call.

He said, “Eh, I don’t know. I’m just ready to hang it up. I’m thinking about retiring.”

We talked a little bit and he said, “If you need someone till you find somebody else or if you need someone for a couple of nights, I’ll run it.”

So anyhow, I think we ran three races that year at the end of the year. And then during the winter we got to talking and on it went. I guess that made me feel pretty good too because I brought a guy out of thinking about retirement to look where he’s at today.

KO: Your debut with Jon came at Gas City. I wasn’t there but I talked to people who were there and they said he was fast. You guys had a problem in the feature but immediately the light switch was flipped on with him. And then for Eldora’s Four Crown, you guys had quick time, which was pretty cool for the Hazen 57. That aluminum block engine was stretching its legs and that had to feel good.

Paul: That’s where we stretched it. We burned it. We burned a piston.

KO: Was that in the heat race?

Paul: No, it was the B-main. I think he was leading the B-main and this big, old puff of smoke came out the tail pipe. I thought, “Oh shit!”

KO: I don’t know what you noticed in those three races at the end of ’99, but obviously it was enough to make plans for 2000. Did you have any idea that you were going to have that amount of success as you did with him?

Paul: Oh, no. I never had any idea. Everything looked good, but to take off like that and win as many shows that next year, was quite a shock.

KO: I remember in the off-season, talking to Jon at the PRI show and he said that he didn’t know if you were going to come back with him because you had the potential to get paid to wrench on someone else’s car. I don’t know if that was Chris Gurley or someone else. Do you remember anything like that?

Paul: No, I don’t. I don’t remember that.

KO: Anyway, you guys decided to give it a go again and early on in 2000, you were strong on the bullrings. But on Terre Haute’s half mile at the SCRA race in June, talk about stretching its legs, but your car broke the track record. You got underneath twenty seconds, which was almost unheard of. The track was super heavy that night. Todd Kane ended up beating your record, but how much did it excite you to see your car go so fast on a big half mile, especially Terre Haute?

Paul: Yeah, that was pretty exciting. Up to that point, we never had much success down at Terre Haute. Yeah, that definitely got my attention.

KO: That was the Saturday night. They had problems with rain that week and the finale was in the daytime on Sunday afternoon. You guys ended up second to Jay Drake. But, I have a picture of the car; I think Randy Jones took it, hiking the left front, big time. So I have to imagine that something happened to cause it to lay over on the right rear like that. What made the car do that and do you wish you had that race back?

Paul: Uh, probably! I’m thinking the track had a little moisture in it and I think we had a little weaker bar in the right rear than what we should have had.

KO: Didn’t it take rubber though?

Paul: Yeah, maybe that’s what it was. It could have been that too and it would have done the same thing. I also remember that we had brand new tires on both rears and on the right front. The right front, the tread was gone clear down but it wasn’t down to the cords. Both rears were onto the cords. They were that close to going.

Oh, I think that may be the other thing! Jon knew that the tread was an issue. A lot of guys were eating ‘em up that day, blowing ‘em. And he knew that he was losing traction and surmised what was going on with the right rear and we had that weight jacker on there. He jacked that weight out of the right and into the left to wear more on the left. I think that’s the reason it was doing that hiking.

KO: That could have been your first win together and instead, it was a second place. You had to wait a little bit longer for that first win together, that coming on July 16^th at Kokomo. It’s interesting that your first win together came at Kokomo because Jon hated the old version of that place. It was truly a finesse joint, narrow and fairly intimidating with that concrete wall. Were there things that you had instructed him to do differently than what he did there before? Or was it just his confidence in the car that got you that win?

Paul: No. You know, in fact I never even knew, up until I had read this and heard this, that he didn’t even like Kokomo. I had no idea. Somebody told me that he knew when he took the ride, driving for me, that he was going to have to run Kokomo. And you know, it was kind of a shock to me, because I had never heard anything. He had never said anything to me about not liking Kokomo. So yeah, really, it was all his doing to figure out how to get around there.

KO: Regarding that old Kokomo layout which required so much finesse for a driver, why did your setups always work there?

Paul: Basically we just run inside weight, you know. We changed the stagger every now and then. We started with the setups I’d ran before and it kind of worked. We went from there with what he wanted to do afterwards.

KO: The end of 2000 was good. During Sprintweek, you finished third at Kokomo and Terre Haute. You got another win at Kokomo on the local scene. And, you also scored two wins at Terre Haute, one of them during NAMARS midget week and another during the U.S. Dirt Nationals. Even though they were not USAC sanctioned, were there any special thoughts about standing in victory lane at Terre Haute, right off the bat with Jon?

Paul: Yeah. That was pretty exciting. Terre Haute kind of got to me like Kokomo with Jon. It just seemed like – we’re going to Terre Haute again and we’ve got a good chance of pulling this off! We got pretty tough down there. So yeah, for a track that over the years that you had trouble with, it’s like it made a 360 degree turn and come around.

KO: I don’t know if you can say it was one thing over the other that led to the success there. You had the aluminum block, you had the ’94 Stealth, but you had a different driver. Jon really runs well there in anybody’s car and the added horsepower helped, but can you say the success was attributed to just one thing?

Paul: The added power with the aluminum block helped, but Jon’s good down there. He’s good anywhere but I sat up there in the pit grandstands and it took me awhile to get used to how he comes into that corner over there in three. If the track’s decent, he’ll come into that thing HARD. I’m thinking, “JESUS CHRIST!”

KO: I bet you were hoping that thing didn’t lean over too far on the right rear. I’m sure his style made you adjust what you were doing.

Paul: Oh yeah. Yeah, we compromised on it quite a bit and went back and forth to what he thought he wanted.

KO: Two guys that Jon had been working with at the time, Chris Hoyer and Josh Uitts, came along to help him when he drove your car. Jim Lindsay, another friend of Jon, helped as well. Other than Roger Brandon with Tony and Jim Bennett with KT, I don’t remember that many guys working on your car before that but I don’t know if I paid close attention to that. So all of a sudden, you’ve got these extra hands where you didn’t have them before. With Chris and Josh, they had been with Jon quite a bit, but were there things that you had to tell them to do or were they already self-sufficient enough to know what to do with stagger, air pressure, shocks, and things like that?

Paul: I pretty much told them what I wanted them to do and they just went and did it.

KO: Extra hands – were they a nice thing? I don’t know if you were the type of guy who liked to do his own thing. Was that a new thing for you? It seemed like you had a good time with them.

Paul: Yeah. Oh, it worked out ok. As long as you’ve got guys you can trust, you know, you watch ‘em a little bit and see how they’re doing it and if they’re doing a good job, then yeah, it’s help.

KO: So you guys had fun?

Paul: We had fun. Yeah.

KO: Moving on to the next year, you got a new Stealth, so you didn’t have to worry about that old one being so tight all the time. You had a new car for 2001 and you scored eight wins with Jon behind the wheel. Was the 2001 Stealth that much improved over the old ’94 model? You got more wins, but I’m not sure what was different on that car. Was it another 39 incher?

Paul: It was a 40 inch car. It was just easier to work with.

Flying Shoe – Casey Shuman participates in a Gas City USAC union in April of 2008. (Randy Jones photo)

KO: A lot better? More consistent?

Paul: Yeah. Probably if the other one would have been a 40 inch car, it would have been about the same. The difference in the motor plate to the rear end, it’s just a lot easier to work with since it wasn’t so tight on the right rear.

KO: One of those eight wins came at Terre Haute in a KISS race, beating Tony Elliott and Jeff Walker, who were an extremely stout combination at the time and were the guys you generally had to beat. It was around the fourth of July and it had just rained, so it was super heavy and guys were plugging radiators full of mud. Knowing how strong they were, was that win any sweeter or was it just another win? It stood out for me at the time, but I’m not sure if it even registers for you. Elliott and Walker were stronger than steel.

Paul: Well, I’m sure it felt real good, being that they were so tough at that time. I don’t know if that was a KISS race from the year we won the KISS points or not. If it is, that would have made it real special.

KO: I think in ’01, Dickie Gaines ended up winning the KISS points. That was the first year of the KISS. At that time, those races were special because they paid more than a local show and not many shows paid that well at that time. It seems like it was an off-night, a Thursday, and a lot of people were there. I didn’t know if that one stood out but there were a lot of wins after that, so I can understand how that one might blend in with the rest.

Paul: I’m sure there was a lot of excitement at the time.

KO: Tony drove for you and you grew up around Don Walker, Jeff’s dad. With that Elliott-Walker combination, maybe it meant a little more to beat them?

Paul: I think so!

KO: Also in 2001, you and Jon scored your first USAC win together at Putnamville during Indiana Sprintweek. It was another photo finish between Jon and Dave Darland. Dave was driving the Arctic Cat car and I think Phil Poor was working on that car that time too!

Paul: Oh yeah?

KO: Did he have anything to say afterwards, like at Santa Fe in ’87?

Paul: No…

KO: It just seemed like things were really clicking at this point and I’d imagine you were having a blast. Was it as fun as it seemed, even from an outsider’s perspective?

Paul: Oh yeah! Oh yeah! It was fun.

KO: Jon had thought about retiring and right before that, you had thought about hanging it up too. And yet, you guys kind of helped each other resurrect your careers. Just thinking about that had to make it pretty satisfying.

Paul: Yeah it was. There’s somewhere in this streak where I think we had six or eight feature wins, one right after the other. That’s another one of them deals where I’m thinking, “MAN, this is COOL! I hope this never ends!” But you know it’s gonna.

KO: Let’s move on to 2002. The first win of the year came at the famed Hulman Classic at Terre Haute. Back in the day, that was the biggest race on the schedule, as it used to pay ridiculous amounts of money in the seventies, maybe even like fifteen grand! Of course it doesn’t pay that anymore. Regardless, it’s always been one of the most prestigious races on the schedule, dating back to 1970. Was this win bigger than Santa Fe or the Four Crown? Or was it just up there along the same lines?

Paul: It was big. I’d have to say it was up there along the same lines.

KO: Was the Hulman Classic a race that you always wanted to win? Did you ever go to that race without taking your car there, just to watch? Even if you did take your car, I just wonder if it was a bigger deal because of the talent who showed up to race.

Paul: Well, I never did go just to watch. I guess the biggest shock was that I never thought we ever had a chance of winning the thing to start with. And then to go out there and win it and literally kick their ass…

KO: Yeah, because A.J. had the lead early on…

Paul: J.J. Or A.J.? Oh yeah! A.J.!

KO: In Edison’s car.

Paul: A.J. Yeah.

KO: And then you guys ran him down and just drove off.

Paul: Yeah. Yeah. And then every time they had a caution, he’d just open up a straightaway, well not quite a straightaway, but he’d just walk off from ‘em. You know, and I’m thinking, “What is SO special about this car today, you know? Why is it doing this?”

KO: But you’d already gotten a number of wins there in 2000 and 2001, so this win just backed up those others.

Paul: Um-hmm. Yeah. And you know, the Hulman Classic, that’s right up there with ‘em. I can’t say one over the other.

KO: But it’s definitely one you can hang your hat on.

Paul: Right.

KO: Thinking back to 2002, you scored three wins in one August week, which is a pretty nice accomplishment. I think your streak of six in a row was in ’03. Given that Jon had been in your car for nearly two years and that he’s generally a quiet guy to begin with, had your level of communication changed or improved compared to when he first drove for you?

Paul: No. The communication was pretty much the same all the way through. We were very communicative on setup. He knew how the car was when it came to the track. And then we adjusted from there. We talked back and forth about it before we did it. Yeah, communication was the same all the way through.

KO: If things hadn’t already been great between you two, 2003 was even better. The dream season. You two nailed 19 wins. You were the KISS champion. You claimed the Kokomo track title. You got a couple of very big USAC wins. I think some of your 19 wins even came with a steel block underneath the hood, including the first one of the year at an extremely heavy Putnamville, where you narrowly beat Elliott again. In a year when equipment was emphasized so much, especially with Yeley’s success, did those steel block wins mean just a little more and make you laugh and smile on the way home?

Paul: Yeeeah! Yeah. Sure did.

KO: Was it outsmarting them – we beat ‘em with an old combination? I wonder what your thoughts were on that drive home.

Paul: Yeah, I think that was one of them deals where our aluminum motor was down. But we had to use a steel block.

KO: And you might have gotten a few more that year with the steel block.

Paul: I think so.

KO: Maybe at Montpelier and Kokomo?

Paul: I think we had something like four or five races that we ran that steel block motor and we won before we got the aluminum one back. Yeah, that made it pretty special. Everyone says, “You’ve gotta have an aluminum motor.”

Well yeah…ok!

Focused – Jon Stanbrough defeats J.J. Yeley in a nationally televised Indiana Sprintweek event at Lawrenceburg on 7/24/03. (John Mahoney photo)

KO: Rewinding back to ’03 and recalling when your wins started mounting, amazingly the month of May saw only one feature win. But June made up for all that. Three Sundays in a row, you guys won Kokomo. In the middle of the month, you were second with USAC at Lima (you probably hadn’t been back to Lima in awhile) and you beat J.J. Yeley at Eldora. You’re remembering that second at Lima?

Paul: Jon came in afterwards and he was a little puffy. I said, “What the hell’s wrong?”

“Oh, I wanted to beat him so damned bad I could taste it!”

“Well, second ain’t bad.”

KO: The next night you guys went to Eldora and everyone had their suspicions about Yeley. That was a career year for J.J., winning 26 features or so. Everybody was in awe of what he was doing that year. Looking back and knowing how strong Yeley was that year, that’s another one of those wins that’s big. It was USAC at Eldora and you beat the guy that everyone wanted to beat. Was that any more significant for you? Is that one up there too?

Paul: Yeah. Yeah it’s right up there too.

KO: I don’t know if anyone was expecting your car to beat Yeley at Eldora and yet you spanked him. I still don’t know if the track took any rubber that night, but I remember Jon passing him right through the middle. I would guess that Yeley was running on top and yet you drove underneath and right on by.

Paul: That was another one of them deals where you say, “How’s this happening?”

KO: Did you think Yeley was using traction control that night and that season? Or did you even worry about that?

Paul: Oh, I would probably say it crossed my mind, you know. But I didn’t worry about - wasn’t anything I could do about it anyhow. I didn’t worry about it. A lot of people were talking about it.

KO: Definitely. It was on a lot of people’s minds and I think it psyched a lot of people out along the way.

Thinking about the month of June and early July, you guys won five races in a row leading up to Sprintweek. Not to get too greedy, but were you thinking about a Sprintweek title at that point?

Paul: Uhhh, yeah. That was the goal! I didn’t really think about it a lot, but that was the goal.

KO: It ended up being a difficult Sprintweek. You guys crashed in qualifying at Haubstadt and it must have been on the second lap because you ended up starting the feature near the front after the B-main. That crash required a major thrash and yet you nearly won the feature. I think Yeley ended up nipping you guys towards the end of the race. It seemed like you had a lot of hands helping you get that car back on the track. You seem to remember that?

Paul: Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t realize that we had as good of a qualifying time as we had. And I didn’t realize that all the way through, until we had the car back together. Anyhow, when they brought it in, it was a mess. It took the rear end, the driveline, and the front end, basically the whole running gear. We started working on that thing and the next thing I knew there was a crowd of people working on that car and to this day I can’t tell you who all was there. But there was a bunch of people helping. Brian Tyler and his wife Donna, they had a rear end over there and they brought it over because we didn’t have a spare. And we thrashed on that thing and got it back in time to go out there for the B-main.

When I found out that we had that fast time, did we have quick time?

KO: I think it might have been fifth or sixth or something like that.

Paul: Pretty quick. I thought, “HOLY COW!”

KO: And yet you almost won the race. Talk about rising from the ashes.

I think Haubstadt was on a Sunday. Kokomo was the next race on a Wednesday and the night after that was Lawrenceburg. I remember driving along on interstate 74, right about where the Honda plant is now near Greensburg, and I saw the 57 hauler stranded on the side of the road. I wondered how you were going to get that thing to the racetrack. So obviously you had some trouble with your truck. How did you end up getting to Lawrenceburg that night? Did someone come and get you? Did you get it running and drive it down there?

Paul: With this truck here, the GMC, I was headed to Lawrenceburg. I got out on 74 and was going down through there and I got to noticing every time a vehicle came up to pass me, he’d flip his windshield wipers on.

I thought, “What the hell’s going on? What’s leaking?”

I’m thinking for Sprintweek I carry a lot of fuel. Surely ain’t none of that fuel sprung a leak back there! I did pull off to the side, got out, went back, opened the trailer door, and everything looked good. I’m walking back up and went around the front of the truck, looked down, and hell, the right rear tire is real shiny, like it’s wet. Well, then I got to looking around and shit, I had diesel fuel, and I mean it’s dripping off everywhere. So then I’m looking underneath the truck and it’s sitting there running and here’s this drip, drip, drip, drip. “Awwwww Jesus!”

So, I thought, “Whatever! We’re going to make ‘er or burn, one of the two.” And then I’m thinking, I just filled that big tank up in the back of the truck. It holds a hundred and twenty-some gallons of fuel. I thought, “Man, if this thing ever sparks, it’s gone!”

So I went on into Lawrenceburg that way and every time a car would pass me the windshield wipers would be on. I thought, “Man, these people have got to be hating me right now, with diesel fuel on their windshield.”

And we got into the track and I told Jon about it. They were going to follow me back but I told them, “No, I don’t think you want to follow me back. You might want to run in front of me. Don’t follow me, because you’ll have your wipers on. “

So we went back to Jon’s house and stayed there that night. The only place we could find that would work on that truck was in Lebanon. Indianapolis couldn’t come up with it. Nowhere could they come up with a diesel technician to work on it under warranty. So anyhow, we took it up to Lebanon and left it off there and we were going to use Jon’s truck. He had a Ford dually and we hooked it onto the trailer. I think Bloomington was the next night and we started from Jon’s place to go to Bloomington and his brakes go out on his truck. I don’t remember if it was the master cylinder or the wheel cylinders but something sprung a leak on his truck. He’s towing that trailer all the way to Bloomington and he’s stopping with the emergency brake.

So we get that trip made, we come back and the next morning he called the Haydens and they had a dually that we borrowed for the next night in Terre Haute. We ended up through that series of races with three different tow trucks. I think that next week I got mine back. They had to order a fuel injector pump – it had sprung a leak. They put a new pump on it and then we got it going again.

Four Crown – Tony Elliott and Paul Hazen achieve Eldora success at the 1987 Four Crown Nationals. (Jim Fisher photo)

KO: Amazingly with that Lawrenceburg story, you finally got your car to the track and again, that live national TV must be magic for Paul Hazen because you and Jon beat Yeley for a humongous win. Jon’s got tears rolling down his cheeks in victory lane. It was HUGE! I think a lot of people, either watching on TV or there in person, were rooting for the 57 car. It was kind of like David versus Goliath. J.J. was so hard to defeat that year.

You are a smart guy who knows his way around a sprint car, but when you went up against Yeley and the resources of Tony Stewart Racing, did you consider yourself an underdog?

Paul: Oh yeah. Yeah. Definitely. The thing about that particular race was, it got down there towards the end. The last five, ten laps, whatever. There was one caution right after the other. Every time we were able to pull out and go, but those cautions keep on coming and Yeley was terrific on caution flags – you know them adjustments. He’d keep adjusting.

I said, “Man, this can’t keep going on forever!”

Well, it kept going and going and we ended up pulling it off. It was a big surprise because I just figured every one of them cautions, we was done, you know?

KO: It was a nasty, heavy racetrack that whole night. It ended up working in your favor. I’ve got a picture from that night of Jon and J.J. side by side and Jon is actually on the top. It was a pretty spectacular race. Kind of a long day, with the trouble with the truck and all?

Paul: Yeah, it was.

KO: That year, 2003, with Yeley winning and all the adjustments he’d make, just like you mentioned earlier, that got everyone scrambling to put together one of those coil-front, sway bar chassis. Everyone had to have the Penske shocks. Guys that were running American Racer tires were switching to Hoosier. But you and Jon, you stayed with the tried and true combination. You still had your four-bar Stealth. You still ran Pro Shocks. You kept the American Racer tires. Regarding your success, was it simply a matter of you two staying focused on what works for you rather than getting distracted with all the new ideas from J.J.? Was that the key to your success?

Paul: I think that was a big part of it.

KO: You already knew what worked with what you had. You didn’t have to experiment but everyone else was trying something new and getting beaten. If people came up to you and asked you why you were running so good and winning all of those races, what would you tell them?

Paul: Well, you know we got accused A LOT of times, on this particular year, for having traction control. And you know, I tried to make them understand. Hey, I couldn’t even afford the button for the traction control, let alone the traction control! That didn’t get nowhere. So they’d come over and start asking where the traction control was, or what kind of traction control we had. I’d say, “It’s in the cockpit there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well go look, it’s in the cockpit, down there in the right hand corner.”

They’d go over there and look and they’d look and they’d look. “I didn’t see anything.”

“You don’t see that pedal in there?”

“Yeah.”

I said, “That’s traction control. It’s the guy that works that pedal.” (Laughing)

KO: I bet they’d get kind of worked up when you said that!

Paul: So anyhow, that turned out to be kind of fun, in the end. It got to be pretty aggravating there for awhile.

KO: You guys had such an awesome year. I don’t know if you could ever dream of having a season like that.

Paul: No. But you know, talking about the coil car, I don’t know whether you know this or not, but that’s actually what caused the problem between Jon and I.

KO: Yeah. I was getting to that in my list of questions. If you want to get into that now, that’s fine.

Paul: He told me, “We can still beat ‘em, but it’s on the verge of not being able to. You just got to run this car SO hard to be able to beat ‘em.”

A coil car just wasn’t in my category. You know. I told him that I just don’t think they are going to be around that long.

He said, “Oh, no. It’s going to be the car of tomorrow. That’s the coming thing. That’s what you’re going to have to have.”

I said, “I can’t afford to go out and buy all this. A coil car takes a lot of special stuff.”

Gas It Up -Tony Elliott is spotted at Gas City way back in 1988. (Jim Fisher photo)

KO: There’s even different sized bars in the rear in addition to the coils for the front.

Paul: There’s the coils – just like bars - you have to have different ones. Just a lot of different stuff and then two years down the road you find out that it’s no good, what are you going to do with all that stuff?

I don’t know. We just couldn’t get together on that. He was bound and determined with the coil car.

KO: That’s exactly where I was going with my next question. For 2004, you started the year with the same basic chassis, tires, and shocks, etc. Early on, you didn’t have the success and maybe it was because the tracks were different at that time of the year. Who knows the reason? But I remember Jon kept lobbying for you to put together a Chalk sway bar car. I know you said that it was part of the reason for the break-up, but I imagine that you became pretty annoyed. Is that the right word?

Paul: Yeah, somewhat. He ended up and got one them Chalk cars himself.

KO: I remember the last race you guys were together, you won with it at Kokomo. I think it was a combo car where you could run coils or the bars on the front.

Paul: I believe it was.

KO: Do you think you could have had similar success in ’04 with the tried and true four bar car?

Paul: I really think so. That’s kind of where I was coming from. I thought, “How can a guy win 19 features and say that you’re not competitive?” You know?

No matter what kind of car is out there running, that couldn’t get through my mind.

KO: So even though Jon took the offer to drive for the Hoffmans, did his insistence on the new car cause too much stress for the relationship to continue? Or do you think the offer from the Hoffmans was the primary thing that sent him on his way?

Paul: I think at the point he knew that I wasn’t going to change to a coil car, which at that time I just definitely wasn’t going to, at that point…I don’t know how the Hoffman deal came about . I think they called him. He was going to do that because they had coil cars.

“Ohhhhh-kayyyyy.”

KO: In your last race with Stanbrough, you won with the Chalk car at Kokomo, your 37^th win together. That’s a pretty solid number over four seasons if you don’t count the three races in 1999.

Paul: And we had that Mopar Million deal. That was in that last year too.

KO: Oh yeah. I forgot about that.

Paul: All this stuff. I just couldn’t make it work in my mind why we had to have something different.

KO: Continuing with that question, even though there was a little friction earlier that season, were you sad to see him go? Obviously you had some awesome years with Jon; years you wouldn’t have dreamed about. Did you feel some sadness?

Paul: Oh yeah. Yeah, you have that much success together and everything’s going great – just one little disagreement and BOOM, it’s over. And you think, “Jesus!”

KO: Just think what could have happened if you two kept going?

Paul: Yeah. Yeah.

KO: Thinking about all of the drivers you’ve had in your car, Jim Elliott, he was a big deal. Tony – a big deal. Kevin Thomas – big. Robbie Stanley too. Then were was Jon. I don’t know the exact number that Jim or Tony won with you. Maybe they won more. They probably did. But you still had to be very satisfied with Jon, considering that you picked him at a time when no one else would have picked him. He was on the verge of retirement. Do you still think about that?

Paul: Yeah. I still think about it, you know. You kind of wonder why things happen at times, but they did.

KO: In that stretch of running with Jon, do you think he made you a better wrench? I’m sure an outsider could say it was the combination between you two, although it appeared to me that you certainly helped him advance, as you gave him a ton of confidence. Did he make you better?

Paul: He probably gave me more of a secure feeling of where you can be really competitive if you want to be, with the toughest.

Getting After It – A.J. Anderson negotiates the rough stuff at Gas City during the 2007 season. (Dave Merritt photo)

KO: After Stanbrough, you had Dave Darland in the car for one race and then you worked with A.J. Anderson for a while. Things didn’t quite work out with A.J. so you tried Casey Shuman. The first night was Gas City Sprintweek but the next night was Lawrenceburg. Again, another cowboy track and after some rain, they ran the feature. You two clicked immediately and finished fifth. At the time, Casey was not a proven commodity around here. He wasn’t on anybody’s radar screen. So why did you try Casey? Did you know his dad Ron from before?

Paul: Uh, yeah. I knew Ron from previous years. Casey had been running another car around here a little bit and it was kind of another one of them deals where you just look down through the list and figure out who the best one is to try and that’s what I came up with.

KO: About a month or so later, you and Casey won at Kokomo on Labor Day weekend and of course you gained some momentum with some more solid runs towards the end of the season, making plans to go with him again for 2005. You were one of Stealth’s most important customers so naturally they wanted you to go with their 2K4 coil-front chassis that Bryan Clauson and Kevin Briscoe had great success with. Somehow they got you to agree to go with the coil car but did you really want to go with it at the time? I know you struggled with it but who struggled more, you or Casey? Were you still reluctant or were you just willing to give it a try?

Paul: I was still a little reluctant. But I’d watched and I thought, “Well, maybe I’m wrong?”

So the only way you’re going to find out is – give it a shot, you know? To be real honest with you, I was never so happy to get rid of a car in my life as I was with that car. It was a struggle.

KO: Casey didn’t feel real comfortable with it either, but I don’t know if it was because you weren’t comfortable with it. If you’re not confident, then he’s not confident, and vice versa.

Paul: You know, I really don’t know for sure, but I know Bryan Clauson, when he was in it, they had one and their car worked great. And when they came that night and we changed this car completely over to how they run their car, he said, “Man, I don’t know what’s wrong with this thing, but it’s a demon!”

I think that was the word he used. “It’s a demon!” It just kept going from there.

I thought, “Jesus, here’s a guy that’s got one, loves it, and I do everything to this one like his is, and it ain’t worth a crap.”

KO: What wasn’t that car doing for you? No side bite? No forward bite?

Paul: It kind of had a mind of its own. You could make adjustments. It might help it. It might not do nothing. There was no consistency. And, it had another feature, of course I see that happening still some, but if the track was rough, it gets that bouncy thing, you know? It wants to bounce all over. I don’t know. It just wasn’t there – nothing there like you’re used to working with.

KO: Up at Kamp, for an MSCS show, you had Kevin Briscoe get in it, to see if he could help. Did he have the same remarks?

Paul: The same remarks. He had one of them cars and was pretty successful with it. And he drove it up there for that reason.

He said, “Yeah, I’ll go up there and run it, see if I can help you out.”

And, we worked on it up there and it was probably as good as it ever had been, with him in it up there. But it was far from being what you’d call a real good car and he had the same remarks. He said, “Man, I don’t know. It just don’t react like it should.”

KO: Well, at least Kevin was able to get you in the ballpark. But, Casey ended up going with Eric Barnhill. He had a torsion bar car, a DRC, although it did have a front sway bar. Did you consider going back to the four bar car to keep Casey in the seat?

Paul: I don’t remember when I did go back to the four bar.

KO: I think the next time for a torsion bar car might have been when you hooked up with A.J. Anderson in 2007. And that was a DRC.

Paul: Oh, ok.

KO: The next year you ran with Billy Puterbaugh and he was still working with Stealth and you still ran the coil car.

Paul: I guess I was still fighting it, trying to make it work. I got some different-type springs for the front and stuff.

KO: So anyway, that was 2005. Part of the way through 2005 you and Casey parted ways and you got Puterbaugh in the seat. Again, like Casey and like Jon, he was another name that hadn’t been around in awhile, out of the spotlight. I don’t think he was on anybody’s list. Yet, you two ended up forming a team and fairly early, you won at Kokomo on Labor Day Weekend. Did he come recommended from Stealth? Maybe you worked with him when you picked up your car? Maybe he even welded your car together? Did you two combine your programs?

Paul: Let’s see…(long pause) I think the way it started out was, he had a DRC coil car and I ended up just taking care of it for him. He brought it all up here. I did the work through the week on it and he ran pretty decent in it. At the track, the adjustment stuff, whatever he’d been doing, that’s what we did. I think that’s the way it took off. I just took care of his car for him. And it got into the season then, somewhere along there, when we ran my car. I don’t know if we lost a motor, but anyhow, we were back to his car. He crashed real bad down at Kokomo. I was already down on my finances in fixing mine. And that crash pretty well whipped them I guess. And that’s when we ended up splitting there.

KO: You were still running the 2K4 and you got a couple of wins with Billy at Putnamville in 2006, but as you’ve just noted, that deal didn’t last. I didn’t realize it was a crash that put everybody out.

A kid that you pitted next to at Kokomo was your next driver – a very polite and patient young man named Josh Spencer. You spent a month and a half with him. With a driver like Josh who was used to taking care of his equipment just to make it to the next race, what sorts of things were you able to teach him to make him a better driver?

Paul: The thing that I told him was, just run it however it feels to you. If it feels good, go! Don’t be afraid to run it. Don’t be afraid you’re gonna hurt it. I said that you don’t have to try to impress me. That’s basically about all I told him.

KO: So did you take a different approach with Josh when compared to previous young drivers you had in the seat?

Paul: Ummm, no, not really.

KO: I think there was a crash Josh had on the first lap of a feature at Kokomo where Jon Stanbrough slid in there and they touched wheels. I don’t know if it was that crash that did it but maybe from that point on you had a bent racecar. Anyway, after Josh came Matt Hardin and Bryan Stanfill. Again, not much success was had with either of those two but many people made the comment about the racecar being bent up. I’m sure you were ready to go back to a torsion bar car.

Paul: Yeaaah. Yeah, definitely ready.

Giant Slayers – Jon and Paul pose after their emotional Sprintweek victory over J.J. Yeley at Lawrenceburg, proving that David can still beat Goliath. (John Mahoney photo)

KO: For the 2007 season, most of the tracks, namely Gas City and Bloomington, went with a spec Hoosier DT-3 right rear tire rule. You have been a McCreary/American Race Tire loyalist for as long as I can recall. For someone like you who may have previously gotten a good deal on tires, how much money did the Hoosier rule cost you out of pocket? I don’t know if you can estimate that but I am sure that you weren’t too happy about it.

Paul: No, I still don’t believe in it. I think if they are going to have a tire rule, then it should be an open tire rule where you take an American Racer, a Goodyear, where all the compounds are the same or similar, but anyhow…

It not only cost you the tire that you’d been getting on your tire program, cheaper, but here’s what I tried to explain to them. How is it saving us money when you’ve got to buy another right rear wheel, unless you want to be changing a tire every track you go to, back and forth? You’ve got to have another right rear wheel. At least one. If you want to be sure you’re going to finish the race, you’ve got to have two, because you’ve got to have a spare! So you’re buying one or two right rear wheels, which is four and a half apiece.

KO: In addition to buying your right rear tires.

Paul: So really, the only way I like the tire rule is like Kokomo. Kokomo’s got it right.

KO: You can run one compound with the American Racer and one with the Hoosier. Take your pick.

Paul: Right.

KO: With the guys that ran McCreary or American Racer, they always raved about their MC-2. It was the middle tire and they could get several races out of them. How did you feel about the DT-3 from a performance perspective? Did you notice anything different with the racecar?

Paul: Not major, but we had to cut and work on the DT-3 a lot more to get it to work like we want it to work, anyhow.

KO: Early in that 2007 season, Gas City hosted a special Paul Hazen night, celebrating 50 years of racing for you, going all the way back to the beginnings – 1957. A bunch of your old drivers showed up to honor you. Were you surprised at the turnout of the people showing up to pay tribute to Paul Hazen?

Paul: Yeah. I was very surprised and very honored. I didn’t really have any idea that it was coming down to that big of a thing. I didn’t know they was going to have all the stuff going on like they did. I just thought they was going to say it over the speaker or something, you know, and that’s it. But yeah, that was a pretty big honor.

KO: Steve Imel was even there. Mike Mann was there. Was Papa Louie there?

Paul: Uh, I’m not sure. But it seemed like he was though.

KO: Gosh, I think I even saw Tony Elliott on your four-wheeler. I thought at the time that maybe you two weren’t friends anymore, that you patched things up that night. But as it turns out, you two were still on speaking terms, right?

Paul: Oh yeah. Yeah.

KO: A night like that, how did that make you feel? The obvious answer is a good feeling. But, were there any other feelings like, wow, I didn’t know these people still cared? I didn’t know they would still remember?

Paul: I guess it gives you the feeling that you have a lot more support behind you than what you ever dreamed you’d have. Not only the people in the pits, but other people, the fans that got in touch with me one way or the other.

KO: Were you comfortable with such a tribute? I know you said that you didn’t like getting up in front of people, speaking and getting your picture taken. Was it an uncomfortable feeling?

Paul: Yeah, a little, you know.

KO: It only happens once!

Paul: It only happens once. You’ve got to take it in stride.

KO: Going back to 2007, you went back with A.J. Anderson, who you didn’t burn the bridge with back in 2004. You also tried a DRC chassis for the first time, something that A.J. had great success with in 2006. But again, something didn’t click with A.J. A lot like Tony Elliott, A.J. likes to run the bottom and I figured you two could find a setup that would work. But, he was a guy who was used to doing his own thing for the longest time. Do you think that was a big reason why it didn’t work?

Paul: You know, that’s another one of them deals that I couldn’t really put my finger on. We talked through the winter. I decided to get that new DRC. I knew that’s what he’d had some real success with. And he told me everything that he was doing, the bars and everything. I got all the stuff like they had in their car. We set it up like they had their car. We run it like they had their car. We just never did figure out why it wouldn’t do what their car did. It just didn’t work.

KO: You tried Marc Arnold for a little bit and then it was back to your comfortable old pair of shoes, Casey Shuman. Lil’ Shu. I think you even won your first race back together. The question I have is: what made your relationship work with Casey? He’s kind of quiet guy and doesn’t say a lot. Personality-wise, it seems like you two are alike. Was it coming to an agreement on setups? What did you like about having him in your car?

Paul: Well, there again, him and I thought pretty much alike on everything. We never had any words on anything. Just real nice to work with…real personable guy. I don’t know…

KO: Not much more needs to be said. So in 2008, you spent all of it with Casey. You won at Waynesfield and Fremont. You’ve got the big trophy from Fremont – kind of a nice piece for place that doesn’t normally run non-wing sprint cars.

Paul: That was kind of a special race too. They called it the 410 Non-Wing Shootout.

KO: I would guess that a lot of the local guys took the wing off.

Paul: I’m trying to think. I can’t remember who them guys were, but there were a few of them pretty tough guys that run Eldora.

KO: Might have been a Dean Jacobs, or maybe a Rob Chaney?

Paul: Chaney was there, yeah. So that was pretty special. Of course it was the first time he (Casey) had been there.

KO: I don’t know if you’d been there in the past. Probably not a lot…

Paul: Yeah, it had been years and years ago that I’d been to Fremont, not very much.

KO: Mostly for the swap meet I bet!

Paul: Yeah. Right!

Giddy Up – Paul’s latest driver Thomas Meseraull reaches for the Kokomo sky during the summer of 2009. (Dave Merritt photo)

KO: You had Critter Malone and Shane Cottle in your car on some rare off nights where Casey was tied up somewhere else. But moving to 2009, you opened up with a win at Lincoln Park with Shuman. Shane Hollingsworth was in the car one night, but by June, the deal ended with Casey and I had to think that was a sad time because of how well you two got along. You enjoyed some success together. Was this a mutual decision or was it a deal where Casey wanted to move on and do something different?

Paul: Yeah, Casey wanted to move on and do something different. It was pretty much of a shock to me because I had no inkling. Everything was going great. I thought it was going good. Just out of the clear blue I got a phone call. He said it was the hardest thing he ever had to do. But he thought he needed to make a change. I don’t know whether you’d seen it or not, but he put something on the internet about it and pretty much that was all the way it was. He decided he wanted to try something different.

KO: But you two remained friends?

Paul: Oh yeah. Yeah.

KO: Disappointing on your end I would guess?

Paul: Yeah. Yeah it was.

KO: Given that you’ve gone through a long list of drivers, some of them twice, how do you go about picking your next driver? Do you have a list that you’ve developed in your mind? Do you listen to veteran racing people like Tom Chalk? How do you come up with that list?

Paul: I used to not do it at all, but for the last probably fifteen years, I’ve tried to watch more than my car, to try to pick out guys that I like they way they drive, you know, their style. Then, a lot of it is this list I keep talking about and the names on it.

KO: Is it a mental list or is it jotted down on paper?

Paul: It’s all written down. The names are all written down with their phone numbers. Every time I need one I kind of go through that. Then, also, there are a couple people I ask what their thoughts are. Joe, down at DRC, I talked to him the last time. I narrowed it down to three different guys. I called him and talked to him and he gave me his opinion on what he thought. That’s kind of the way I ended up going.

KO: Right off the bat, in your second race with your new driver Thomas Meseraull, you enjoyed ultimate success, winning at Lincoln Park. I know he is a gasser, but what were your initial impressions of him? Was he too much of a gasser? Did you fear that he’d tear up too much equipment? Obviously you put him in the seat so you were willing to take that risk.

Paul: I was a little bit skeptical of that at the time, because the year before when he was in the Trucker’s car, he had been in quite a few little incidents. So I was a little leery, a little skeptical. And he does thrill ya! He can still make me set up and take notice, ya know? Which, I was getting a little lax on that. I think I’ve got him figured to where he’s a hard gasser, on the edge of not gassing it too hard.

KO: The rest of the year saw two more wins at Putnamville, one at Gas City, and although you didn’t get that win at Kokomo, you were knocking on the door. You were up there in the top-five very consistently. That’s as hard a place to run up front in Indiana anymore. Not that you weren’t having fun before with Casey, and you said that Meseraull made you sit up in the seat, but do you feel young again, like you were driving? Maybe it wasn’t quite the same, but still…

Paul: Well, probably a little, yeah. I would say.

KO: I noticed towards the end of the year that Thomas was doing a lot of work on the car, changing stagger and this and that. I didn’t know if that was a normal thing you’d done previously with other drivers or if you’d changed your ways. The question I had written down was, had you recently changed your opinion about driver input? But it sounds like you always took driver input into account, unless it was right off the bat.

Paul: Yeah. Right. Basically what Thomas did, he pretty much tried to help me out, being as I had this hip problem. He jumped right in and I thought a lot of him for doing that. He jumped right in there and did whatever he could do to help me out from not having to go through the misery of it.

Giddy Up – Paul’s latest driver Thomas Meseraull reaches for the Kokomo sky during the summer of 2009. (Dave Merritt photo)

KO: Kneeling down and getting back up, which had to be the worst part…

Paul: Right. Yeah.

KO: Kind of a different question, but I would have to imagine that you get more out of a dollar than a majority of teams out there today. You can make that dollar stretch. We don’t have to get into specific dollars, but how does your budget compare to other teams? Has your budget changed that much in the last decade?

Paul: Ohhh, probably not really. In the last twenty years, it’s probably been about the same. But in the last three or four years, I’ve had a little better help than previous years.

KO: Would you think that your budget is pretty conservative in comparison to your competition?

Paul: It’s pretty conservative. If I had the budget that some of these teams have got, I know I could run five years on their one year budget. You know? And be competitive…

KO: That comes with experience, right?

Paul: Well, that’s some of it. But a lot of it is knowing when to throw something away and when not to throw it away. There’s things that you shouldn’t fix and there’s things that you can fix, you know? I think a lot of teams just toss it.

KO: Talking about dollars, but Physical Medicine Consultants is on your hood right now. Who are these guys? They’ve been on your car for the last couple of years.

Paul: That’s Dave Stinsland, Jr. He’s a doctor over at Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne. His dad is Dave Stinsland, Sr. He’s got a shop out by Woodburn, Indiana. He’s doing some engine work out there. But the way I got associated with them was that they ended up buying the Stealth car that I had. We got to be good friends and they got to coming around a lot. And they ended up buying the Stealth car I had. Dave, through his being a doctor, put a little sponsorship on the car. That’s really been a help too. I appreciate it.

KO: Talking about sponsorship, Bud’s Auto Sales with Bud Kearns, has been on your car for a long time. Guys like that make your year. Do you actively seek sponsorship? I don’t see you being the type of guy to ask for money. I’m guessing these guys just come up and offer you a check, right?

Paul: Well, yeah, I guess.

KO: Do you make phone calls over the winter, asking them if they are going to re-up for the next year?

Paul: Yeah, I usually contact ‘em through the winter and see if everything is good for another year. I have, in the past, over the years, sent, I guess they call them resumes. I’ve made them up, sent them out, and I don’t even get…I sent fifteen out one year and didn’t even get one contact back. So, I kind of got down on that. I know that’s what you need to do.

KO: Product sponsors – you’ve got a lot of them written down on this piece of paper. You’ve had several that have stayed with you for many, many years. Can you name some? Going through that list, I’m reading Dick Kercher Engines. Custom Collision – I guess they provide the paint?

Paul: They paint the car. K&N Products (they’re more than just filters now) – it’s a break on parts. Keco Coatings – they powder coat the frame and side metal panels. American Race Tires – it’s a discount. DRC chassis – just helps me on price. Most of ‘em are price help.

KO: Jesse Geiger and his Geiger Seamless Gutters – he gives you money. Your nephew, right?

Paul: Yeah. Chalk Racing – he gives me a good break on parts. That guy there (SL+Plus Oil Accelerator), he furnishes the oil accelerator, they call it. Autolite – it’s the same deal – just a break on parts. The rest of ‘em, it’s all parts - Weld Wheels, Rod End Supply, Simpson, and Pro Shocks. Hunt Magnetos – he rebuilds my mags every year. I send it out, it costs me shipping, and they send it back, no shipping costs or nothing. So that’s big too.

KO: This is retirement for you, right? You don’t have a paycheck from week to week unless it’s Social Security. Is that correct?

Paul: That’s right! That’s what I keep telling everybody. How many people can keep running on Social Security?

KO: Probably not too many! You might be one of the few, probably the only one on the Indiana dirt sprint car scene that does it that way. I imagine that there are others that do it across the country, but that competitive, I don’t know.

Do you have a favorite driver of the Hazen 57? Jim Elliott? Tony Elliott? Jon Stanbrough? Jeff Gordon? Thomas Meseraull? Can you name a favorite? Maybe it’s not just one but rather a top three?

Paul: (Long pause) Well, it’s pretty tough. I’d say Robbie Stanley, Tony, Jim, Kevin Thomas. Casey. And Thomas Meseraull. If I keep going, I’ll have ‘em all named. But they are all real good.

Good Times – Seated in his office, Jim Elliott grins for the camera, as does his car owner Paul Hazen, seen sporting some cool shades. (Paul Hazen photo)

KO: I see you’re going back to your list of drivers. Obviously you had a bunch of success with Stanbrough, so I’m sure the memories are good there.

Paul: Didn’t I mention him?

KO: Nope! But you did now.

Paul: Yeah, he’d definitely have to be on there. Yep.

KO: That’s probably good. You named some big ones. Having Dave Darland in the car and winning that one race had to be neat too.

Is there an absolute favorite win? We’ve already talked about this before but I thought I’d see if you made up your mind yet. The first USAC win at Santa Fe? The Four Crown at Eldora? The Hulman Classic at Terre Haute? I don’t know if you can say one was better than the other. From talking to you, that win at Santa Fe certainly seemed to spark something from within your soul.

Paul: Yeah. It stands out there pretty good.

KO: A favorite season? Was it the one where you won all the ones with Stanbrough? Maybe you had one with Jim Elliott, even though that was quite some time ago. Maybe one with Tony in the late ‘80s?

Paul: I would have to say it was probably the one with Jon. There was a lot of races there that we won that were pretty big races. Making the Mopar Million and everything, that would be the year that stood out.

KO: How about an all-time favorite track, whether it is around today or not? Would Warsaw Speedway be number one, or do you like some other track better? Is there a place you really enjoyed going to, even if it was only one time?

Paul: Well, I really got cracked up on Fremont when we went over there and won. I really liked the way the track was and thought, “Man, I wished this thing was closer to home.”

Of course it’s a winged track too, to start with. But I guess around here, probably Warsaw was my favorite, at one time there before it closed.

KO: Thinking about competitors, costs of operation, and having fun, is there a decade that you’ve enjoyed the most? You started out in fifties and you ran in the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, and even in the new millennium, but was there one time frame that was more enjoyable than any other? In the sixties, it revolved around running your own stuff. There was more creativity. Maybe guys were a little more loose and had fun? Maybe there was more camaraderie in the pit area?

Paul: Yeah, I think back at the start, you know, from ’57 up through maybe to ’77, everything wasn’t so critical as far as spending tons of money to get the job done. You did a lot of it yourself. You could come up with these so-called secrets that worked. Now everybody can have the same thing. You just go buy it. Yeah, I think that era back then was the best.

KO: This year, 2010, will actually start the seventh decade that you’ve raced.

Paul: Quit reminding me!

KO: Well, my dad is older than you and my mom is about the same age.

Paul: Oh yeah?

Hammer Time – This looks to be Louie Mann around 1980 or 1981, standing on the gas at Kokomo Speedway in the Hazen sprinter. (Paul Hazen photo)

KO: If I had to guess, and we don’t have to put it down, but I’d guess you’re as old as my mom. She was born in ’40.

Paul: Oh! I’m two years older. ’38.

KO: Ok. My dad was born in ’33. But anyway, you’ve been involved in local Indiana racing for a long while, starting your seventh decade, longer than anybody else that’s been around.

In talking about your favorite decade, I think you could probably separate the decades with certain technological developments. Like in the seventies, you started running mass-produced sprint car chassis. You might have had power steering. Shocks got better in the ‘90s. Engines really started developing serious power in the last decade. Are there any other things that stand out in the decades? I realize that may be a tough question, but I was just curious from your perspective if anything stands out. Maybe something like wings in the ‘60s?

Paul: Yeah, that may be. I never got into the wings very much. We run ‘em a little. Like that one there (in the picture on the wall), that’s all home built. So that would be late ’60s there.

KO: Roll cages – you had a roll cage on the car there.

Paul: If you look at that real close, that’s all homemade. The guy that had it before had it done, but it was bent around a big tree. That’s how they made that big bend. It’s a bolt-on roll cage.

KO: Are there other things that stand out from the different decades?

Paul: I can’t really think of anything else. Tires, they went from the solid sidewall to like the drag type tire, with the floppy side. I don’t know when that was, but that came in there during Ferkel’s days somewhere. I remember him talking about taking one out, way off somewhere, and running it.

KO: From a cost perspective, when did things start to change on the local Indiana scene?

Paul: I was going to say in the ‘80s, when I started to say, “Jesus!”

KO: Was it tires or just engines? I remember a brand new 410 Gaerte would cost twenty-some thousand dollars when Sammy Swindell was the factory driver for Gaerte. He was driving the TMC car and I think they were $22,000. It was like, “Whoa, what are they doing?”

Paul: Yeah. We thought that was terrible! That was one of the big things. You know, it seemed like everything just started mushrooming in the late ‘80s.

Head On – His first night of driving the 57, Thomas Meseraull gives Paul a reason to take notice. (Dave Gansert photo)

KO: Purses didn’t increase that much, but the costs sure did.

My next question: racers used to hang out a lot more after the races and help each other out during the course of an evening. Obviously you remember Sprintweek at Haubstadt when Brian Tyler and his wife jumped in, along with an army of others, to lend a hand with your repairs. From a camaraderie perspective, when did things start to change? Was that an ‘80s thing or the ‘90s? I don’t know if you noticed or not because you may have been the type of guy to just go home. When did you start to notice people NOT hanging out as much after the races?

Paul: Mmmmm. Yeah, I was the type of person who didn’t hang out much. We usually would stop and get a bite to eat, but other than that, go on home, because you had the next day. I had to get up and get things ready the next day. Oh, I can’t really say for sure.

KO: But it did change at some point and you noticed it?

Paul: Yeah. I would say probably fifteen years ago. I know with Tony, I read something on him where he made that comment. You know, that’s what he missed about it anymore.

KO: He was definitely a social guy, so I can see why he missed that.

Next question: you tend to stay local rather than venture out with USAC or other groups like the MSCS, as there are travel costs that must be incurred in order to race with those groups. I imagine the entry fees for USAC might keep you away, but what factors determine when and where you race? Dollars and your best chance to make money – does it boil down to that?

Paul: That’s got a big thing to do with it. We tried, oh there were a few different years where we would run out with USAC quite a little bit, but you know, a lot of times you’ll drive way off somewhere to run one night and then you’ve got motel bills, fuel bills – you’ve got all these bills and you’ve only gotta run one night. If you stayed home, you could have run two or three nights in a row. We just kind of got away from that. We still try to run some of the USAC local stuff. It’s pretty much wherever we think we can go and break even or try to make some expense money back, to keep going.

KO: Without getting into trouble with the government, did you make money in your 2003 season when you won 19 times? Is it possible to break even or make money as a car owner these days?

Paul: It’s tough nowadays. There were a few years where you could break even if you had real good years. Nowadays, if you figure, say you made thirty thousand in a season. Well, the driver gets forty percent of that, so there’s twelve thousand gone. You ain’t got much left when you start figuring fuel for the race car and the tow vehicle. Add in the engine rebuild and you’re in trouble!

KO: Is there any driver that you wanted to hire but were unable to do so? Maybe a Ron Shuman or a Steve Kinser for a one-off show? I remember one time you called Eric Shively about driving and he wasn’t available. Was there one driver who you had on your list and you never were able to get him in your car, even though you really wanted him in there?

Paul: (Long pause) I haven’t really thought about that I guess.

KO: Maybe even Bob Kinser?

Paul: Yeah. Yeah. That’d be cool! He’d probably still get it done today!

Kokomo 1995 – Tony Elliott was back in Paul Hazen’s car for 1995, winning ten times altogether, seven of them at Kokomo. (Jim Fisher photo)

KO: Yeah, I imagine so. He always had that tenacity. Anyway, that’s probably not a question car owners think too much about. You always seemed to find a capable driver when you needed one. You probably got who you wanted.

Paul: Yeah, I never had trouble getting a driver. Pretty much every time I called somebody, it usually worked out. I had a couple over the years that called me and even could have brought pretty decent sponsorship but I knew it couldn't work. They were the type of drivers who could go through it in a week or two’s time.

KO: So off the top of your head, who were some of the drivers and teams that you wanted to beat more so than others? If you go back to Warsaw, as a driver I’m sure you wanted to beat Jim Elliott and Don Walker. You’d have to beat Dave Darland or Bob Kinser at Putnamville. Maybe you enjoyed beating the Hoffman car on the USAC trail?

But maybe you don’t think that way? If I know you by now, you just focus on what you need to do right to run the best, not worrying about beating anyone in particular. But if you could name some people that you wanted to beat, I’d be interested to hear who they are.

Paul: Recent years?

KO: It could be recent years or we could go back further in time.

Paul: Definitely J.J. Yeley. That was one, both Jon and I, we wanted to beat him pretty bad – both of us. Nothing against him, just that he was on top, you know.

KO: Was there a rivalry with the Stoops car back in the ‘80s?

Paul: Yeah, Steve Butler, you know, there was a little friction there, so we wanted to beat him.

KO: What about Rich Vogler?

Paul: Vogler. He was always on the list too. I don’t know if we ever got that done. Probably not. Well, I guess we did at Santa Fe. He didn’t finish (laughing).

KO: It’s probably hard to narrow it down because I can tell you are a competitive guy. And rightfully so, I’m sure there were some guys you wanted to beat when you first started coming into your own as a driver. We already talked about Walker and Elliott.

Paul: Probably when I was driving, those would have been the main ones – Walker and Elliott.

There was a guy down towards Kokomo and I CANNOT remember his name. He had a Studebaker and it was pretty tough. Of course everybody wanted to beat him.

KO: This was in the stock car days?

Paul: That would have been in the modifieds, when they first started the modifieds. No, it would have been the super stock type deal.

Home Turf –Tony Elliott stands in victory lane with Paul Hazen and Roger Brandon on 7/5/95 after yet another USAC triumph. (John Mahoney photo)

KO: Your nephew Jesse Geiger has helped you out quite a bit over the years, both in the pit area and with some money. But over the years, it seems like you’ve been a fairly small team when it comes to help. It has usually been just you working on that racecar with some help from your driver. I already talked about Josh Uitts, Chris Hoyer, Jim Lindsay, those guys from the Stanbrough years. Roger Brandon was a regular in the Tony Elliott years. Jim Bennett and his group helped with KT. Dick Kercher, sometimes he helps you out at the track. Are there any others who have helped you over the years that you want to acknowledge, at least ones you can remember?

Paul: Bob Hudson. He doesn’t get there much anymore, but he does help out some. Oh, let’s see, Tom Squires, he comes now quite a bit. I think that’s about it.

KO: Back in those days, when Jim Elliott was driving, was it just you two? Back then it seemed like a lot of teams took pride in having a full crew, with matching uniforms and so on.

Paul: No. Basically a two man operation. He had a friend that came once in awhile and helped. I can’t remember his name either.

KO: So if you’re alone most of the time, how do you handle those late nights on the road back home to Columbia City? What gets you through that drive? I know right now we are listening to country music, but is it country music, coffee, stopping for food, the cigarettes, or just thinking about how to make your car better for the next race?

Paul: That’s where I do a lot of my thinking, you know, about what could have been better, what we should have done, kind of thinking about that stuff. And, the country music and the cigarettes (laughing).

KO: Winston?

Paul: Yeah.

KO: How long have you been a Winston loyalist?

Paul: Ohhh, forever! They ought to sponsor me, hadn’t they!

KO: They should! For as much money as you’ve given them.

My dad - I worry about him if he’s driving by himself to a race. He doesn’t have a cell phone. If something happens to him, I have no idea how to get a hold of him. Do you have a cell phone for emergency purposes?

Paul: Nope! Everybody keeps telling me, “You need to get one.”

But, I haven’t.

KO: I guess you could just put the flares out and somebody might help you.

Paul: Yeah.

KO: I kind of figured that.

You’ve probably seen some crazy things on your way back from the races so late at night. I know I have. Anything come to mind? Like fifty deer crossing the road?

Hooked Up – Jon Stanbrough maxes out the handling of his four-bar Stealth at Gas City during July 2003 Sprint Week action. (Randy Jones photo)

Paul: Yeah. I haven’t seen any for maybe eight years or so, but it used to be every Sunday night coming home from Kokomo, there was a stretch of about twenty mile, where somewhere in that twenty mile I was going to have deer jump across the road in front of me. I mean, this happened week after week. Finally, there was one night where I didn’t miss ‘em all. I clipped one, but just barely clipped it. There was five of ‘em. I came over this hill and there was five of ‘em in the middle of the road. They all went different directions except this one. And he went the same way I was going to miss the rest of ‘em. And I just barely clipped him on the right front fender. It didn’t do a lot of damage.

KO: What way do you come back from Kokomo?

Paul: That would have been on 13.

Talking about weird things happening on coming back from the races, we went to leave Putnamville and I’m going to stay at Derek Davidson’s house. We went to leave Putnamville and that would have been that ’88 Ford. I had a five speed in it on the floor. I went to shift gears and it goes SNAP! And I’m holding the lever in my hand. It broke off about six inches above the floor down there. I said, “HOLY SHIT! Now what are we going to do?”

And we kind of sit there and talked it over a little bit. And he says, “I’ll shift it. You clutch it.” (Laughing)

We went all the way from Putnamville…with Derek down there…every time we had to start or stop and Derek would get down there on the floor, he’d shift that thing. We’d go through the gears, him shifting it, all the way back to Lafayette.

The next morning we got up and took it over to somebody he knew who welded it back on there. That was quite a deal you know – a lot of stoplights to go through! He’s down there on the floor, laughing his ass off. He got so he was pretty good at it though.

KO: I didn’t know if you got the vise grips out, hooking on to whatever was left of the shifter. .

Paul: No…there wasn’t much of anything left. It was round, so the vise grips wouldn’t hold onto it. He wrapped a rag around ‘er and shifted ‘er!

KO: Wow. Any other stories like that?

Paul: Oh…way back on that first car that I drove, we used a tow bar then. Well, I’m towing it and my wife is with me. We’re going to Warsaw. You get to Warsaw, you go left to get to the track. You do down over a hill and then there’s a three-way intersection there. To get to the track, you come to this intersection and you turn to the right and then you stop if the light is red. I come down over this hill and the light is red, so I turn to the right there and I stop. And there goes the racecar past me!

The tow bar broke off and it went past me, went down over a hill, and the Winona Lake is out there. It’s headed right out for the lake! It stops about twenty-five foot from the lake.

Hoosier Legends – In this picture, Jim Elliott is on the outside of a number eleven that may just be Karl Kinser’s car, battling for Sunday night bragging rights at Kokomo Speedway. (Paul Hazen photo)

KO: Geez!

Paul: So, I get the car off to the side and I go out there and I get in the car and there’s a starter on it, so I start it up. I bring ‘er back up there to the road and I holler to my wife, “Follow me!”

She says, “Follow you?”

I said, “Yeah, I’m going to the race track.” I drove that thing down to the racetrack and that tow bar’s up there on the front end, banging up and down and the sparks are flying, and drove it on in that way. I fixed it before we come home that night. But that was quite a deal too.

KO: Let’s say you are racing at Gas City on a Friday, Putnamville on a Saturday, and Kokomo on a Sunday. Can you take me through the schedule of events on a given weekend like this, starting with Friday morning? What do you do to get ready? Talk about the driving back and forth and so on.

Paul: Basically for Friday, I’ve got the car done on Thursday afternoon, have it loaded and everything. Unless they’re calling for bad weather, I just go ahead and get it all done. Then Friday, I can kind of take it easy until it’s time to go. Then I leave and get down there about 3 or 3:30 – plenty early. And I get everything unloaded and wait for the rest and the night to proceed. And then when it’s over, usually we’ll leave there and go to Steak ‘n Shake or somewhere to get a bite to eat. Then back home and that’s usually about 1:30 in the morning. About seven o’clock or so, I get up and unload the car and get everything cleaned up, get the trailer swept out. Fuel jugs filled. Go over the car and reblock the chassis and everything. Get everything done and ready and loaded back up and usually it’s time to head out again.

KO: You’ve got to leave a little earlier to get to Putnamville – longer drive.

Paul: Yeah. You’ve got to leave out of here by 12:30 at the latest. I get down there, and it’s usually about, oh, 3:30 or something and I usually get something to eat on the way. We go through our night down there and it’s basically the same thing over and over.

KO: If you’re racing Kokomo, do you come back all the way here?

Paul: Yeah. Yeah. I get done at Putnamville and come back home. It’s so much easier to come back home and work out of your own shop and you wash everything and do everything. Then if you run into something, you don’t have to figure out how I’m going to get there to get something done, you know? I just come back home and get home usually about two, two-thirty in the morning from Putnamville. This year they’ve been getting over real good – and getting home at a fairly decent time, like one in the morning.

KO: Do you sleep in a little bit on Sunday?

Paul: Yeah. On Sunday, usually unless something’s happened, then you can’t sleep in. I just get up whatever time I’ve got to get up and get it ready for Kokomo and go again.

KO: In all of this, I guess you’ve got the yard mowed already?

Paul: Yeah. Yeah. The wife usually takes care of that. She likes to be out in the sun. That’s how she gets her suntan. So she takes care of the yard mowing.

Huggy Pole – Kevin Thomas protects the bottom of Bloomington Speedway at the Non-Wing Sprint Car Classic in June of ‘94. (Randy Jones photo)

KO: She likes to look good, huh!

Paul: Yeah.

KO: You probably don’t mind her being tan?

Paul: No. No. (Laughing) That helps out.

KO: Talking about your wife, I used to see her at the races a lot more than these days. Did she go at all in the last year?

Paul: No.

KO: So when you’re away, how does she spend her time? I know she likes the sun, probably laying out and doing the yard work, but how does she spend her time? Does she like to go shopping?

Paul: Well, she’s got the grandkids. But the one big thing, she’s tied up with the NASCAR.

KO: Oh, wow!

Paul: She won’t miss the NASCAR races on TV.

KO: Does she like Tony or Jeff?

Paul: Uhhh, Dale.

KO: Dale Junior huh? Because you do have the “3” on the back of your truck.

Paul: Yeah.

KO: So she probably took Dale Senior’s death pretty hard.

Paul: Yeah, that was her favorite. Senior. Now she likes Junior.

KO: So does she go to any of the NASCAR races?

Paul: No.

KO: Just watches them on TV I guess…

Paul: Yeah.

KO: But she’s been awfully supportive of your racing habit. With social security, I’m sure she could probably think of other ways to spend that money. She’s been very supportive, but I wonder if there ever was a time when she wasn’t supportive? Maybe there was a time when she wanted you to get out of it.

Paul: Uhhhh, yeah, probably now! (Laughing)

KO: (Laughing)

Paul: (Laughing)

KO: But generally, she’s always liked the idea of you doing your racing thing, having your fun, and doing what you love?

Paul: Not too bad. Years ago, I know she made the remark to different people, “Well, when he’s doing that, at least I know what he’s doing or where he’s at.”

KO: You definitely have that one track mind. Getting to the races, doing well, and coming back home to get ready to do it again.

Paul: Yeah.

KO: Off on another tangent, car counts are still pretty strong in Indiana despite the economy, which is hitting a lot of people hard. Car counts may eventually fall off, but they are still strong and there’s so many tracks that host this type of racing. Some would say that the health of non-winged sprint car racing has never been better. Would you agree or disagree?

Paul: Umm. I’d say it’s pretty strong. They’re probably right.

Jammin Jay – Jay Drake was Paul’s driver upon his return to sprint car racing in 1999. (Jim Fisher photo)

KO: Do you have any strong feelings about the purse structure for local events? The costs have continued to go up. Obviously you’d like to get paid more, but I don’t hear you complaining about it all of the time, like Joe Roush would if he were still racing. It just eats him alive. Do you have any thoughts about the purse structure and the way you’d like to see it?

Paul: Well, I definitely think it needs to go up some. Everything else has gone up. Granted, their costs to operate have gone up too. You know, I’ve had people tell me already, they wouldn’t care if it went up. The grandstands, most of ‘em are twelve dollars. They said they wouldn’t care if it was double that.

“Where can I go and spend a night for twenty bucks and see the kind of entertainment I’m going to see?”

I don’t know how bad it would hurt if they raised general admission. All I know is what people have told me. I think eventually if something don’t happen on the purse, you’re going to end up with just the well-sponsored teams. The little guy is going to be gone.

KO: Do you have any suggestions or opinions for controlling the costs of sprint car racing? I know you’d like to see the tire rule opened up for the major brands. Do you have any other thoughts about cost control, eliminating or outlawing some things?

Paul: You know, I don’t know where the answer to that is. I know what they SHOULD have done, was back before the aluminum motors got out, they should have hit it right then. Now it’s going to be real tough. Everybody’s got all these aluminum motors. How can you go back and say you’ve got to run an iron block?

KO: Yeah, the All Stars used to have the iron block rule. You’d go to the Kings Royal and the Outlaw guys would have to get an iron block to run that race. That was mid-‘80s.

Paul: You hear the talk about going to 360 cubic inches. Still, it don’t matter! If you’ve got the money, you can put as much in a 360 as a 410.

KO: Some people want to take out the cockpit adjustable shocks and things like that. I don’t know if that stuff wins races. There are some smart drivers who know what to do with those adjustments, like Yeley and Stanbrough.

Paul: I hadn’t thought about that but yeah, that would probably be one thing. Them ain’t cheap. Anything that’s adjustable in the cockpit isn’t cheap. Right now, we’ve got one for the left rear and that’s it. That would probably be a place to start.

KO: But it’s almost like it’s too late, because the real cost is with the engines.

Paul: Umm hmmm.

KO: But, if you could change one thing about sprint car racing right now, what would it be? Would it be going back to the days of iron blocks? Or would you just be happy with purses being raised?

Paul: Probably go back to the iron blocks. I don’t know. I guess.

KO: You mentioned a driver percentage of forty percent. Has that always been the standard with your drivers? Have some gotten paid less? Or more?

Paul: In the last twenty-five years, that’s pretty much standard.

KO: Is that something you say up front, where your percentage is forty and it’s non-negotiable?

Paul: Yeah. I don’t know, but I think it’s probably a pretty standard thing out there because I’ve had drivers come on and I don’t even think about it. They don’t think about it or they don’t say anything, anyhow. We go run and they go get the payoff. Forty percent? Yep. It’s almost a known thing. I guess I’ve heard some people will go with a thirty/fifty. Fifty percent if you win and thirty percent if you place. But that’s what my thing has always been – forty percent. Back before then, I think it started at twenty-five percent and went to thirty percent and then it jumped to forty and it’s never changed since then. It can’t change much more.

Two Peas – Casey Shuman and Paul Hazen seemed to agree on most everything. Two peas in a pod, as they say. (Dave Merritt photo)

KO: Do you have any feelings about daylight savings time? When people talk to me about it, I always say that it has ruined dirt track racing. It’s made it a lot more difficult. I’m thinking from a fan’s perspective and the guy grooming the track. He’s got to do a lot more things where before maybe he didn’t have to do nearly as much. From your perspective of working on the things, changing shocks, bars, stagger, and tires, have you had to change things on your racecars to deal with the daylight savings time?

Paul: No. We didn’t really do much of anything different.

KO: I guess that stays with the theme of you doing your own thing and not being phased by anything else.

What about setups in general – 1980s, 1990s, and now – is it the same basic setup on your car or would you say that there was a point in time that it changed? Of course it probably changed for the different drivers.

Let’s say it’s 1987 at Santa Fe with Tony Elliott and the Challenger chassis. Then there’s KT at Kokomo in ’92. Or even Stanbrough at Kokomo in 2000. Would things have changed that much with what you do to your racecars?

Paul: No. Not really. I was setting here thinking, just about as far back as I can remember, on the four bar cars, no matter what car, what chassis it was, we’ve run about the same bar splits or combinations all the way around. The same Jacobs ladders and links – everything just goes back to the same old deal. You buy everything and everything’s pretty much the same. So it pretty well works out the same.

KO: You started out in stock cars and turned to modifieds and then sprint cars. But why not midgets or dirt champ cars?

Paul: Oh, the dirt champ cars, I’m sure they’d be a lot of fun and everything, but God they go so far away from home. So there again, you’re spending a lot of money out on the road. They’re far enough away a lot of times you’re going to stay overnight a couple of times. They do pay good I guess. I don’t know. I just never got there.

KO: Are you a goal setter? When you don’t have anything in your shop to work on, do you sit around and think about goals for the next year?

Paul: No, not really.

KO: Are there any racetracks left that you haven’t won at that you want to win at? You’ve won at Eldora. You’ve won at Terre Haute. Those are the big ones. You’ve won on both the old and the new configuration at Kokomo. You’ve won at Bloomington, Montpelier, Warsaw, Lawrenceburg, Gas City, Putnamville, Paragon, and even Haubstadt. Is there any place left to win at?

Paul: The only one I can think of off hand is the new Lawrenceburg. We owe that place one.

KO: After the nasty crash with Casey two years ago?

Paul: (Chuckling) Yeah…

KO: I never talked about that. That was a pretty ugly wreck. Has one of your racecars been torn up as bad as that night?

Paul: Uhhh, that’s right up there. I’d say Caldwell that time up there at Findlay (Millstream). I mean there was NOTHING left of that car. Every piece. The bars were all threw out of it. I mean everything was flying off of it. That was a pretty healthy deal down there. Pretty bad.

Winging It – The Hazen 57 takes part in the first-ever winged show for USAC in April of 1987. (Jim Fisher photo)

KO: Thinking about goals for next year, maybe you want to win a USAC race with Meseraull? Maybe a ten thousand to win race? What do you want to get done next year from a performance perspective? Are there any races you’ve circled that you want to win? Or, is it to just get from race to race and win a few if you can?

Paul: Well, that’s basically how we do it. Even last year or even the previous years, I make up a schedule. I haven’t gotten the schedules yet to do it. I usually make up a schedule and put it all in one book. And we just kind of look at it from one week to the next and figure out where we want to go, what we want to do. I’d like to run some of the MSCS stuff and USAC, you know, just work some of them shows in. It just kind of depends on how things are going, how much funds we’ve got to work with, how much we can travel around.

KO: So if it gets to the point where you are out of funds, you’ve got to stop, right?

Paul: Yep. Shut ‘er down! That’s something I did years and years ago. I got a separate account for the racing versus separate from the monthly home bills. If the racing thing gets empty, just shut ‘er down. I think I’ve had to do that twice, two times, for just a short time, towards the end of the year.

KO: Not to dwell on the years and your age, but you’ve been doing this since 1957. What keeps you going from year to year? There’s got to be a fire in your belly, wanting to go racing. What really is it? You love racing. You love the sport. You love working with people. But what keeps you going from year to year?

Paul: Just feeling like you’re the underdog, just being a small operation, and every once in awhile when you can beat the big operation, it just gives you that really good feeling, you know? Just keep going back after it.

KO: As far as how much longer you want to keep doing this, maybe your wife would like to have you around home more, but for as long as you can keep doing it, I’m guessing that’s what you want to do, right?

Paul: I would guess, yeah. I’ve had that question asked a lot of times.

KO: I’m not meaning to put any pressure on it.

Paul: No, a lot of times my answer is, have they dug the hole yet? (Laughing)

Words to Live By – These words embody the spirit of Paul Hazen.

KO: I got you! That’s a good answer!

I’ve seen a lot of awards and trophies in your shop today. Probably the most special one is the HARF Hall of Fame award in 2007. I forgot to ask about it, but of course you got honored alongside Chris Economaki from National Speed Sport News. I’d guess you’ve been a subscriber to that paper for a long time. They should be giving that subscription to you now! But what did you think about an award like that – HARF Hall of Fame? When you got the word that you were going to be inducted, did you think they were crazy?

Paul: Yeah. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t remember who all was on that list that year to be voted on, but there were some names on there, when I first seen it, I thought, “Yeah, if I don’t get it, this ain’t no biggie.” But when they called me and told me, God, I about had to pinch myself to see if I was awake or not. I couldn’t believe it.

It was a big honor. I was very impressed over getting it. I never once expected anything like that fifty years ago.

KO: The National Sprint Car Hall of Fame, that’s a much bigger deal. I don’t know what your thoughts are about getting into that, but it’s probably never been a thought. Have you been out to that hall of fame in Knoxville?

Paul: No. Huh-uh.

KO: Who knows, maybe you’ll have to go out there for a reason some day? I just don’t know of anyone who has been as heavily involved in this sport for so long and had that kind of success from start to finish. Do you know of anybody?

Paul: Ummm…not right off.

KO: Maybe a family has been involved that long, but one person, probably not. If there were an award for perseverance, I think you should get it. But you could probably care less. As long as you get to go to the next race, right?

Paul: Yep. Next race.

Ninety-nine pages of text and this short novel has come to a close. Of course the story is far from over as there’s still plenty of racing and life left in Paul Hazen, continuing to make Indiana sprint car racing history. I hope you enjoyed this long and winding road and as always, feedback is welcomed at bullringko@aol.com.