A native of Muncie, Indiana, John Paul, Jr., was born on February 19, 1960. John has always been involved in some form of racing or another. He won the first race he ever entered, at Sebring, and has since driven in many different racing series in subsequent years. As an Indy Car rookie in 1983, John won the Michigan 500. He has won 18 IMSA races, and has been on the winning team two times at the 24 Hours of Daytona. John has displayed an amazing talent to readily adapt to different styles of race cars.

In 1998, John drove the #81 Team Pelfrey Car in the Indy 500. John led almost 100 miles of the '98 Indy 500 in the Oldsmobile V-8. This led to him being asked to drive the #10 IRL car of Jonathan Byrd/Cunningham racing. The combination of John Paul, Jr. and Jonathan Byrd racing seemed to mesh quickly; perhaps a bit of a preview of good things to come. Visionaire came on board as a primary sponsor and, on September 20, 1998 John put the VisionAire Indy car in Victory Lane, at Texas Motor Speedway, with a 1.577 second win over Robby Unser.

Despite a few races that season in which equipment problems surfaced, John nevertheless wound up 11th in IRL points at the end of the year -- and only 3 points out of the top 10. The team started 1999 with high hopes, but a crash at Indianapolis during practice for the Indy 500, which sent John to the hospital, proved costly. After Indy, the team basically closed shop due to high costs and sponsorship problems.

John is a highly regarding road course teacher as well, and is in demand as an instructor for road racing. He has worked as an instructor for the Justin Bell Driving School, private coach for drivers, team manager for an Infiniti Pro Series race team (2003) and test driver for open wheel race teams.

Currently, John makes his home in Indiana. He has two children from a previous marriage, and is single.