John Paul Junior

John Paul junior in the Lola T600 at the IMSA GTP race in Laguna Seca 1982

The Porsche 956 with the Jean Rondeau and John Paul second overall at the 1984 24 Hours of Le Mans reached

John Lee Paul junior (born February 19, 1960 in Muncie ) is a retired American car racing driver , racing team owner and drug dealer.

Origin and education

John Paul junior is the son of John Paul senior and his first wife Joyce. John Paul Jr. grew up in Muncie and moved to Indianapolis with his mother after his parents divorced in 1970 . To go to high school , he returned to Muncie in the mid-1970s and went to Delta High School . After his father founded his own racing team with JLP Racing in 1977 , he started working there that same year. He was a mechanic, worked in logistics and took care of administrative work. His father was also active as a driver, and paid the son of a driver training course at the Skip Barber Racing School , the racing school of the former Formula 1 pilots Skip Barber . His driving instructor qualified his student's practice drives as hopeless.

Drug trafficking

From the age of 15, John Paul Jr. was involved in his father's illegal drug deals. On January 10, 1979, he and a friend were arrested at a bayou in Louisiana while they were loading boxes onto a pickup truck . Customs and drug investigators who became aware of the duo had found traces of marijuana on the back of the car . The following investigations led the investigators to the new 42-foot sailing yacht from John Paul senior, which was nearby in the river. In addition to US $ 10,000, there were other traces of drugs on board. Nearby, in a clearing, was a truck rented by the Pauls , in which investigators found 710 kg of hashish . All three involved were charged, sentenced to three years probation each and a fine of US $ 32,000.

Although the sentence was suspended, the Pauls continued to smuggle drugs (mostly marijuana) from Colombia into the United States. By the 1980s the drug ring had grown to over a dozen people. In addition to John Paul junior and his father, this also included his grandfather. In 1985 there was a trial. His father was arrested after a shooting attack on the informant Stephen Carson. Carson was a member of the drug ring and made himself available to the authorities as a witness. Carson was seriously injured in the attack and Paul Sr. was caught on the run. He was charged, released on bail and fled to Switzerland. He was arrested in Switzerland for a forged passport and extradited to the United States after serving a six-month prison term. In the following process, all members of the drug ring, insofar as the authorities could get hold of them, were indicted. John Paul Jr. was sentenced to five years in prison in 1986 after pleading guilty to the charges. He served 28 months of the sentence in the prison of Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery in the US state of Alabama .

Racing career

After the negative experience at the Barber Racing School, John Paul senior took his son's education into his own hands. He bought him a Formula Ford racing car and reported his son to some local racing events where he could gain experience. This was followed by assignments in Formula Atlantic .

In 1980 he became a driver in his father's team. The very first race event ended with an overall victory. Together with his father, he won on a Porsche 935 , the 1.5-hour race at Lime Rock in 1980 , a championship round of the IMSA GT series . By the end of his driving career in 2002, he had competed in 175 sports car races , of which he won 20. There were also 21 second and 13 third places as well as a class win.

His second sports car outing brought him to Europe for the Le Mans 24-hour race . The partner of the two Pauls was the Briton Guy Edwards . The trio drove a Porsche 935 JLP-2 and finished ninth in the final ranking. With the start of the IMSA GTP series in 1981 , the Pauls and their racing team started in this championship and John Paul junior quickly developed into one of the most successful drivers of this championship. In 1981 Brian Redman and John Fitzpatrick were the opponents of Paul junior, who achieved second place overall with victories in the last races of the season in Pocono and Daytona . In 1982 he was the dominant driver in the series. With eight wins this season, he won the overall standings by superiority. The victories also included victories at the 24-hour race at Daytona (with John Paul senior and Rolf Stommelen as partners in the Porsche 935-JLP3) and at the 12-hour race at Sebring (again with his father in the Porsche 935-JLP3 ). Paul Junior drove in the GTP series until the middle of the 1986 season, when his career was interrupted because of the trial and the resulting prison sentence.

In 1989 he made his comeback in motorsport. He returned to the IMSA series and since his father's racing team had now dissolved, he took on engagements with different teams. In addition to these missions, he contested the Indianapolis 500 mile race five times and drove in NASCAR . He could no longer build on his great successes before his arrest. He had his best season in 1993 , when he finished fifth overall in the final season of the IMSA GTP series.

illness

John Paul junior's racing career ended due to a serious illness. As with his grandmother and mother, who both died of complications from neurodegenerative diseases , he was diagnosed with Huntington's disease in 2002 . Huntington's disease is a hereditary disease of the brain that has remained incurable to this day and is “typically characterized by involuntary, uncoordinated movements and, at the same time, flaccid muscle tone”.

For the past few years, John Paul Jr. has lived in Los Angeles near California State University, Los Angeles , where his disease is treated at the UCLA Designated Center of Excellence by Huntington's Disease. The treatment is financed by a foundation he set up, which also supports other people who suffer from this disease.

statistics

Le Mans results

year	team	vehicle	Teammate	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
1980	JLP Racing	Porsche 935 JLP-2	Guy Edwards	John Paul Sr.	Rank 9
1984	Henn's T-Bird Swap Shop	Porsche 956	Jean Rondeau		Rank 2
1995	ZR-1 Corvette Team USA	Chevrolet Corvette ZR-1	Chris McDougall	James Mero	failure	Engine failure

Sebring results

year	team	vehicle	Teammate	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
1981	JLP Racing	Porsche 935JLP-3	John Paul Sr.		failure	suspension
1982	JLP Racing	Porsche 935JLP-3	John Paul Sr.		Overall victory
1983	Henn's Swap Shop Racing	Porsche 935L	Michael Andretti	Derek Bell	failure	Engine failure
1985	Pegasus Racing	March 84G	Ken Madren	Wayne Pickering	failure	Clutch damage
1986	RC Buick Hawk	Hawk-March 85G	Ken Madren	Whitney Quite	failure	Engine failure
1990	Busby Racing	Nissan GTP ZX Turbo	Kevin Cogan		Rank 5
1991	John Shapiro	Porsche 962 GTi	James Weaver		failure	suspension
1992	Leitzinger Racing	Nissan 240SX	David Loring		Rank 8 and class win
1993	Momo	Nissan NPT-90	Giampiero Moretti	Derek Bell	Rank 2
1994	Champion Porsche	Porsche 911 Turbo	Bill Adam	Victor Gonzales	failure	mechanics
1995	Prototype Technology Group	BMW M3	Dieter Quester		Rank 20
1996	Dyson Racing	Riley & Scott Mk III	James Weaver	Rob Dyson	Rank 24
1997	Dyson Racing	Riley & Scott Mk III	Elliot Forbes-Robinson	John Schneider	Rank 5
1999	Corvette Racing	Chevrolet Corvette C5-R	Ron Fellows	Chris Kneifel	Rank 22
2000	Konrad Motorsport	Porsche 911 GT2	Franz Konrad	Charles Slater	Rank 12

literature

• Christian Moity, Jean-Marc Teissèdre, Alain Bienvenu: 24 heures du Mans 1923–1992. Éditions d'Art, Besançon 1992, ISBN 2-909413-06-3 .

Web links

Commons : John Paul Junior  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• John Paul Junior at Historic Motorsport Central
• About John Paul senior and junior
• John Paul Junior at the Driver Database
• John Paul Junior at Racing Sports Cars

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Training and first races
2. ^ First drug trafficking and first punishment
3. ↑ Report in the New York Times about the assassination attempt on Carson
4. ^ John Paul Jr. sentenced to five years in prison
5. ↑ Prisoners at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base
6. ↑ Lime Rock 1.5-hour race in 1980
7. ↑ IMSA-GTP series 1981
8. ↑ IMSA-GTP series 1982
9. ↑ On the imprisonment and the comeback that followed
10. ↑ IMSA-GTP series 1993
11. ^ UCLA Designated Center of Excellence by Huntington's Disease Society of America
12. ^ About the illness of John Paul junior