Le Mans versus Grand Prix: Inside the dangerous race to make the perfect petrolhead film

Telegraph

15 hours ago

In the mid-Sixties, there were two teams revving up to make the first truly authentic motorsport movie. It became, rather appropriately, a race. In pole position were Steve McQueen and director John Sturges, who planned to produce the Formula 1-set film, Day of the Champion. Behind them on the starting grid was director John Frankenheimer and actor James Garner, with their rival production, Grand Prix.
For McQueen it wasn't just friendly competition, it was personal. Garner was a co-star in The Great Escape but also McQueen's neighbour, living in the apartment underneath McQueen's home. When McQueen's Day of the Champion spun out, allowing Grand Prix to overtake and pass the finish line first, McQueen would urinate onto Garner's flower boxes below. 'You p_____ on my film and now I p___ on you,' McQueen allegedly said.
Making the definitive racing film was 'an obsession' for McQueen, says film producer Mario Iscovich, former assistant to McQueen. 'He always was a racer. His abilities and instincts were completely natural. He could out-drive some of the best drivers around. Steve was a seat-of-the-pants guy. He could feel every movement on the road.'
That very real passion for motorsport drove McQueen to remodel Day of the Champion as Le Mans, based on the 24-hour race of the same name and eventually released in 1971. But it wasn't a case of slow and steady wins the race. Le Mans had what you might call 'engine trouble' as McQueen's obsession turned to near self-destruction.
The troubled production, which ran over schedule and over budget and was hit by serious accidents, saw McQueen lose friends, creative partners, his marriage, and – eventually – control of his dream film. Crashing at the box office, Le Mans momentarily dented his star aura – what McQueen called 'the juice'.
But, five decades on, Le Mans remains the purest race film ever made – almost like watching the real thing. And, alongside Grand Prix, it feels like a prototype for the Brad Pitt-starring F1, in cinemas now, putting viewers in the cockpit with innovative car-camera technology and real race footage.
Le Mans has also taken on a mythical quality, with the iconic image of McQueen holding up a V-sign, and rumours of a million feet of missing racing footage – footage that was discovered under a soundstage for the 2015 documentary, Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans, which explores the thrust and cost of McQueen's need for speed.
'That footage gave us an insight into obsession, drive, and an absolute passion for this sport,' says the documentary's co-director John McKenna.
'He was a speed freak,' says co-director Gabriel Clarke about McQueen. 'To get behind the wheel of a car and drive at death-defying speeds, you have to be getting something out of it that takes you beyond the risk. He wanted to capture that out-of-body experience – the spiritual place it takes you to.'
McQueen's original idea – Day of the Champion – was inspired by The Cruel Sport, a book by photographer and writer Robert Daley, which showed the dangerous side of Grand Prix racing. Fatal crashes at the time were frighteningly commonplace. Sturges was negotiating the rights for the book and Warner Bros, bankrolling Day of the Champion, was ready to announce production.
However, just one day before the announcement, Sturges found himself sat next to John Frankenheimer at a benefit function. Frankenheimer, who had directed The Manchurian Candidate (1962), casually told Sturges that he was working on a new project for MGM: a motor racing film based on The Cruel Sport. Sturges was negotiating rights with the book's editor but Frankenheimer had gone directly to the author. The very next day, Warner Bros and MGM both announced rival Formula One films. The race was on: Day of the Champion vs Grand Prix.
McQueen was actually offered the lead in Frankenheimer's film but spurned the project after a disastrous meeting with producer Edward Lewis. Frankenheimer couldn't attend the meeting himself and later wrote that McQueen and Lewis 'hated each other at first sight'. Though McQueen's ex-wife, Neile Adams, wrote in her memoir that McQueen didn't much like the cut of Frankenheimer's jib either.
Garner later called McQueen to break the news that he'd signed on for Grand Prix. 'There was a $20 silence there on the telephone,' Garner said. 'He didn't know what to say. Finally, he said: 'That's great, great, glad to hear it…' He didn't talk to me for about a year and a half – and we were next-door neighbours.'
Neile recalled that McQueen took it like a knife in the back. 'That f____,' McQueen said as he slammed the phone down. 'You just cannot trust anybody in this business.'
Both productions fought to sign up pro racers to drive camera cars and handle choreographed racing footage. As McQueen's producer Robert Relyea told biographer Marc Eliot, huge amounts of money were spent to secure drivers and stop them joining the rival film. 'Fortunes were being spent by Sturges to try to kill Frankenheimer's movie, and the same went for Frankenheimer,' wrote Eliot. McQueen and Sturges got British drivers Jackie Stewart and Jim Clark, as well as Stirling Moss as a consultant, while Frankenheimer got the first American F1 champion, Phil Hill.
Both films planned to shoot racing from actual Grand Prix events, with cameras mounted on cars, interspersed with footage of actors driving for real.
'The idea was, put the audience in the car,' said Frankenheimer, whose words echoed McQueen's vision. 'We fooled around for months, experimenting with various places to put the camera and with various lenses.'
Both film crews attended the 1965 Monaco Grand Prix and jostled for the best positions. Sturges's crew then got exclusive dibs on the 1965 German Grand Prix at Nürburgring but – as remembered in a Sky documentary, Steve McQueen: The Lost Movie – there were rumours that the rival crew would show up anyway. Anxious that their rushes might be stolen, they labelled some dummy film cans and filled them with sand, hoping that Frankenheimer's team might pilfer the wrong ones.
Forced to make a pit stop
McQueen himself went off to make acclaimed war drama The Sand Pebbles, in Taiwan. The film earned McQueen an Oscar nomination but it was a difficult production and delayed progress on Day of the Champion.
Meanwhile, Frankenheimer followed the Formula One 1966 season and pulled ahead. He also befriended Carroll Shelby – the driver and car designer played by Matt Damon in Ford v Ferrari (2019) – who helped build replica cars for the production (the actors drove Formula 3 cars modified to look like Formula 1).
But the rivalry still had some mileage. Moss attended the 1966 Monaco race and assessed the performance of the Grand Prix movie cars. He then reported back to the Day of the Champion car team, suggesting modifications so their cars didn't slow up in the same way as Grand Prix's.
Frankenheimer scored a victory when he screened footage from Monaco for Enzo Ferrari, the Ferrari founder, who previously declined any involvement and told Frankenheimer they couldn't even use his name. But Enzo was so impressed with the footage that he offered Frankenheimer use of whatever he wanted – the Ferrari team, the factory, whatever they needed – all for free.
Elsewhere, Frankenheimer became an inconvenience for Formula 1 teams. They had two hours to shoot before F1 practices began – time that real drivers wanted on the track – and got under the feet of the pit crews.
Hill was one of the drivers in the Grand Prix camera car, a Le Mans-style Ford GT40 that hit speeds of 200 mph. The footage was unlike anything race fans had seen on screen – vibrant, high-speed, full-colour action, back when F1 was ordinarily broadcast in bleary black-and-white.
Even with its runtime of three hours, Grand Prix is arguably an easier watch than Le Mans, with a more formulaic melodrama woven around the racing action. Top driver Pete Aron (Garner) causes his teammate Scott Stoddard (Brian Bedford) to crash then goes off with Stoddard's wife (Jessica Walter) while Stoddard fights through injuries to make a comeback. Meanwhile, French champion Jean-Pierre Sarti (Yves Montand) falls for a journalist (Eva Marie Saint) and contemplates life beyond racing – as long as he isn't killed first, that is. And Grand Prix certainly doesn't shy away from the perils of racing. In one scene, Aron celebrates a win with all the fanfare – flowers, adoring fans, the national anthem – while crash victims are scooped off the trackside.
In reality, Garner didn't have the same need-for-speed as McQueen, but his driving was impressive nonetheless. 'l believe that if Garner had decided he was going to do this as a young man, he could have made a very good career as a race driver,' said Frankenheimer. 'He was that good.'
In one scene, Garner drives with the back of his car engulfed in flames. 'That's when the insurance company cancelled my insurance,' Garner recalled. 'I drove the last month and a half without insurance.'
McQueen, meanwhile, was stuck filming The Sand Pebbles and saw a newspaper picture of Garner sitting in a race car. 'Steve went wild,' said publicist Rupert Allan. 'Just nuts.'
With McQueen still on The Sand Pebbles and Grand Prix speeding ahead, Warner Bros made the call to kill the engine on Day of the Champion. 'We're going to be second,' said the studio head. 'Close it down.'
The Sand Pebbles and Grand Prix opened the same week in December 1966. McQueen lost out on the Academy Award for his performance, but Grand Prix picked up three statues for sound and editing. McQueen's son, Chad, made him eventually see Grand Prix. Talking to Garner again, McQueen mumbled his approval. 'Pretty good picture,' he said. Iscovich remembers that they were pals again soon after.
McQueen revived Day of the Champion as Le Mans in 1969, as part of a deal with Cinema Center Films, the filmmaking arm of CBS television network. McQueen was now the world's number-one film star, following Bullit and The Thomas Crown Affair in 1968, and set up his own company, Solar Productions. According to Eliot's autobiography, Solar almost bankrupted McQueen before Le Mans even started, but he was so set on making the film that he turned down Bullit 2 – a sure-fire box office smash – and The French Connection.
'Steve wanted to capture car racing in a way he thought it wasn't captured on Grand Prix,' says Iscovich. 'He wanted it to be the ultimate car-racing film.'
According to Chad, who died in 2024, McQueen wanted Le Mans to capture every aspect for absolute authenticity. 'The smells, the noise, the feeling,' he said.
Iscovich remembers script meetings in Palm Springs, California, where they found more of a rhythm than an actual story. McQueen pushed for as little dialogue as possible. 'He envisioned this character as very stoic,' says Iscovich. Indeed, in the finished film there's 38 minutes of crowds, pit crews, and racing before his character, Porsche driver Michael Delaney, says a single word: 'Hello'.
'The first 40 minutes are essentially a documentary,' says Clarke. 'Cameras, sounds, the feeling of what it's like to be at a race – the festival feel. That's brilliant. It then becomes a movie and needs to have a story supplanted onto it. It's a mishmash.'
Dangerously off-script
McQueen prepared for Le Mans by off-road racing in Mexico and competing in the 12-hour endurance race in Sebring, Florida. It was an exercise on what biographer Eliot called 'method racing'. Driving his Porsche 908, McQueen and his partner came in second and won kudos from real race drivers.
McQueen had wanted to enter Le Mans too, teaming with Jackie Stewart, but the insurance wouldn't allow it. 'It was a point of contention,' says Iscovich. 'They didn't want him to race. He wanted to do what Tom Cruise has been doing in all these films. And believe me, Steve was quite capable of doing it.'
McQueen entered his Porsche into the race as a camera car, which was converted to carry three cameras. As with Grand Prix, camera rigs were built to capture never-before-experienced race footage. They were, according to McQueen, 'breaking the film barrier'. The idea, also like Grand Prix, was to shoot footage from the real Le Mans race, which would be intercut with specially shot racing footage with the actors and pro drivers, including Derek Bell and David Piper.
'These were top drawer guys,' says Gabriel Clarke. 'They joined McQueen in the middle of their season and were told to act out scenes by driving at full speed. It was choreographed, which is more dangerous than instinctively racing. There was genuine danger. It's fascinating to think how far people were willing to go in pursuit of a creative vision – not for sport.'
The plan was to write the script around the Le Mans race, held in June 1970, with the story taking its cues from whatever played out on the track. There were writers on hand but McQueen was never satisfied with any of the pages and wouldn't commit to a story.
Sturges, who directed McQueen in The Great Escape, was particularly frustrated. He had signed up to make a narrative film, but what McQueen wanted was more of a documentary.
'I know John was frustrated because they were making it up as we went along,' says Iscovich. 'The script was in trouble before we started filming. Progress was slow. They weren't achieving their days of filming; they kept rewriting, things kept changing, Steve was being difficult.'
As executive producer, McQueen was at the wheel, but the production – along with McQueen's mental state – was spinning out of control.
'He was acting kind of crazy,' says Iscovich. 'There were displays of paranoia and volatility, and stress and irritability and shortness – and being nasty.' He adds: 'Steve could be very nice, but he could be an asshole.'
There were also a series of accidents. Bell crashed and suffered burns to his face. Piper crashed and had his leg amputated below the knee. McQueen himself was involved in a crash in the early hours with one of the film's actresses, Louise Edlind, beside him. Iscovich was also in the car and saw his left arm snap as the car sped off a country round and plunged into a ravine. 'It was pretty nasty,' Iscovich says of the accident. 'He lost control. There were no seatbelts, or no one wore them… he was just driving too fast.'
It was a potential PR disaster – the world's top film star, a married man, in a crash with another woman. 'He was so afraid,' said Edlind in Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans. 'I could see how scared he was, that I would ruin him and his production.'
Iscovich took the rap for the crash. Though no one told Iscovich outright that he had to take the blame, it was implied in conversations with McQueen, the publicist, and the producer. '[The publicist] said, 'You were never here, Steve,'' recalls Iscovich. 'Steve turned to me and said, 'This never happened, you got to take care of it.''
Iscovich – then just 21 – didn't mind. 'You just kind of did it. It was part of the job.'
There were, says Iscovich, 'lots of ladies' around McQueen. Women were as much a passion for him as motorsport. When his wife Neile arrived in Le Mans, McQueen admitted to her that various women would be visiting him that summer. He then questioned whether she'd had an affair. Neile admitted she had, with an actor who – most galling of all – had won an Academy Award. Neile's memoir describes an appalling scene: McQueen put a gun to her head and slapped her repeatedly, interrogating her about who the actor was. Neile filed for divorce the following year.
McQueen fell out with other people close to him. He fired his most trusted screenwriter, Alan Trustman, and punched Iscovich for – of all things – giving away one of McQueen's t-shirts. 'He was like a lunatic,' says Iscovich. 'He punched me and I fell over the couch. I couldn't take it any more… Steve said, 'You can't quit me! If you quit, I'll make sure you never work in this business again!''
McQueen also split from his producing partner Robert Relyea when an outburst from Relyea – shouting, 'This picture is out of f_____control!' – alerted Cinema Center Films to just how bad things were. Relyea left and they never spoke again.
Losing creative control
Cinema Center Films called a crisis meeting and took control of the film. McQueen had to agree to relinquish his executive producer role and give up his $1 million salary. He was ordered to decide on a script – any script, it didn't matter. The studio wanted a Steve McQueen picture to make up for the escalating costs. The film was now $1.5 million over budget and several months behind schedule.
When Sturges also walked off the film, declaring, 'I'm too rich and too old for this s___. I'm going home,' Cinema Center Films replaced him with Lee Katzin. McQueen was forced to take a back seat. Even with the creative compromises forced on him, there still isn't much of a story in Le Mans beyond McQueen brooding over the track and connecting with the widow of a driver killed the year before, who questions why he feels the need to drive. Other than that, it's just racing and the circus around it.
Le Mans finally arrived in cinemas in June 1971. It made around $6 million domestically from a budget reported to be somewhere between $7 and $10 million. McQueen didn't attend the premiere. But watched now, the race footage is mesmerising, drawing you in – arguably the closest any sports film comes to recreating the sport on which it is based – with an almost art-house feel to everything off the track.
'It's a different kind of film; it's very stoic,' says Iscovich, who reconnected with McQueen before his death in 1980. 'It's like a silent film in many ways.'