“I’m not sure whether I’m an actor who races or a racer who acts,” Steve McQueen once said. He never seemed sure, and neither did the audience. His iconic role in Le Mans cemented his image as a man who could drop Hollywood for Hockenheim at the turn of an ignition key, because away from the set McQueen was going off script in a series of race-bred machines.
McQueen needed the release. Once he flipped down his visor, he was no longer acting. “Racing was giving me a fresh identity. I was no longer just an actor; I was a man who raced, and that was important to me – to have that separate identity.”
He ran a Porsche Speedster 1600 Super in his first formal race, held at Santa Barbara’s airport in 1959. McQueen won on his debut. “He talked about it for weeks to anyone who’d listen,” complained his wife at the time.
The Porsche was replaced by a Lotus XI, and with a faster car came tougher competition. He came second the first time out, again at Santa Barbara. The following day it looked like Steve might go one better, but he spun and stalled the engine, and recovered to fourth. “In that Lotus I really started to become competitive. I was smoother, more relaxed; the rough edges had been knocked off my driving. I was beginning to find out what real sports car racing was all about.”
Later that year he raced at Del Mar, a temporary circuit at a fairground. He was leading the race when he accidentally hit the emergency fuel cut-off switch on the dash, which killed the power. “I was embarrassed about that, but I was still learning. Each time you race you learn more.”
To ramp up his education, McQueen invited Stirling Moss round to his L.A pad. “He was keen to talk about what it was like, because racing then was a much more romantic life to that which it is now, and the romance appealed to him,” explained Sir Stirling.
Moss was, to Steve, a hero, so you can imagine how humbled he was when Stirling agreed to some one-on-one tuition. “He could handle a car quite well. If he’d had wanted to he could have made a living at it, he had the flare for it.”
In the international playboy stakes, as well as racing, McQueen was still amateur-class compared to the rakish grand prix driver, but his charisma and style impressed Moss. “He was very cool! The way he dressed, with his shirt cuffs turned up, very laid back. It was so effortless.”
By this time, in 1961, the studio had given McQueen an ultimatum: Give up racing, or forget the movies. Grudgingly, he sold the Lotus. But, given McQueen’s rebellious streak, he didn’t acquiesce for long.
Following The Great Escape, McQueen could do what he wanted and was entering increasingly prestigious car races and dirt bike events. He took class victory alongside Peter Revson in the 24 hours of Sebring in 1970 in a Porsche 908/02. Remarkably, McQueen drove with his foot broken in six places after a motorcycle crash two weeks earlier. By the end of the race he was in extraordinary pain, his cast having melted off his foot.
McQueen, naturally, wanted to race at Le Mans that summer too, but the studio, recalling their actor’s recent injuries, had other ideas. Sure, he could drive, and another actor would get the lead in Le Mans the movie. Faced with the choice of 24 hours’ racing or ten weeks filming behind the wheel of Porsche’s awesome 917K, he chose the latter.
Finally, he decided, he was an actor after all. But racing was the part he was born for.