WIDE World of Sports broadcasting legend Jim McKay called him one of the "wittiest, classiest and smartest athletes" he had ever interviewed.
The folks at Lime Rock racetrack in the heart of the Connecticut hills like to think of him as a local hero, more fond of the three-dimensional mix of wood, steel and glass he produced with a pencil and ruler in 1998 that still serves as the start/finish line complex where he won a Trans-Am title in 1969.
And art dealers from New Orleans to New York think his "Seeing is Believing" artwork reveals techniques that "focus the viewer's attention in a way few fine arts painters would dare to create."
But what makes Sam Posey tick?
"Le Mans," he once said. "A total experience which can be compared only to the Woodstock rock festival."
Painter, driver, architect, broadcaster and legend, Posey is still a renaissance man rolled into a 60-year-old body -- a constant three-day festival of art, gas pedal and worldwide announcer. That he still holds an enormous love for the outskirts of the industrial French city, and its billiard-table smooth Mulsanne straightaway, might say more about what he could never attain that what he did.
Put simply, Posey is a man nearly as well known for what he didn't do on the course, than what he ultimately did off it.
Born in the heart of New York City 12 months and 22 days before D-Day, Posey lost his father in the Second World War, but quickly gained a love for the American racing scene. Using his family's prosperity, he became one of the most well-known figures in American motorsport, more as a result of his versatility and omnipresence at U.S. tracks than because of his results on them.
It's a never-ending resilience, "A zest for life," he once said. "Just have never quite lost it."
And even if the early results were hardly overwhelming.
By 22, Posey had made his first start at the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans (France) endurance race, driving for the Bizzarini team in a Chevrolet, only to be disqualified for crossing a white line in the pits. He would eventually finance his own cars in the Can-Am circuit and Trans-Am racing before finally falling into a win as a late replacement at Lime Rock (Connecticut) in what would be engineer Carroll Shelby's last win for Ford.
From that point on, from Daytona to Argentina, and most parts in between, Posey would bounce around from endurance race to endurance race, with cars that would either overheat, break down or get caught in bad weather.
Before he was 30, he would try his hand at Le Mans, the 24 Hours of Daytona endurance race and the 1,000 Kilometres of Buenos Aires until eventually giving Formula One a go at Watkins Glen (New York) in 1971, the year he turned 27. Posey would beat out Dutchman Gijs van Lennep for a ride, but 14 laps later, slip into more of the usual -- a breakdown and engine failure in his Ford Cosworth V8.
A year later, he would qualify faster than the likes of F1 legends Niki Lauda and Graham Hill, but finish 12th out of 18, two laps down at Watkins Glen. He would never see F1 again. At least not behind the wheel.
"Which just made me appreciate it that much more later on," he said.
Posey would go on to race in Formula A, take one run at Indy (finishing fifth, two laps down, but ahead of Mario Andretti), drive Formula 5000s and the Sebring 12-Hour Race. In the end, racing would become secondary, with Posey a victim of sponsorships that would dry up, cars that gave up and checkered flags that would be few and far between.
It was time to really shine -- an "afterlife," Posey would call it in an interview shortly after his retirement.
And the racing afterlife would be a good one.
Throughout most of the 1980s and '90s, his voice would become synonymous with Indy 500 telecasts on ABC, alongside Jim McKay, Paul Page and American legend Bobby Unser. Popular and accessible among car clubs and organizations, he would become a regular keynote speaker and would help his son, John, start a racing school.
He would earn a solid reputation and even take home an Emmy -- Posey's voice hardly fading as Indy drifted further and further away from the mainstream.
But the afterlife also meant many other things.
In 2001, he was singled out in a Washington (D.C.) Art Association exhibit for his move into printmaking.
Look in the racing history books and Posey will be there. Look across the track at Lime Rock and you'll know Posey was there. Look in an art museum, on TV or around the corner -- Posey was there.
"Racing was a passion," he once said. "But it's just one."
Jason Stein is a feature writer with Wheelbase Communications.Wheelbase Communications supplies automotive news and features to newspapers across North America.
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