In-between takes, he would tell me stories about great races, and you could hear the passion in his voice.' Those recordings made it possible for Doc Hudson to reappear in this movie, released over eight years after Newman's death. Lasseter said, 'In a way, he mentored me in racing, because car racing was his true life's passion, and I made sure that whenever he came into the recording booth, we were recording everything.
In June 2017, Entertainment Weekly reported that during the voice-actor recording process for Cars (2006), Director John Lasseter spent a lot of time in the recording booth with Paul Newman, who often regaled him with stories about his life and his many years as a race car driver.