Le Mans Movie Review: THE Historic Racing Movie

Steve McQueen’s Le Mans is considered a must-see movie by many racing fans. Ahead of the 2025 24 Hours of Le Mans, we found it was high time to watch it again for our review series.

Image: ZANTAFIO56 via Wikimedia Commons, available for distribution under the CC BY-SA 2.0 deed / Paramount (montage)

Monaco is done and dusted. The Indy 500 has found its winner. That means it is time for the third jewel in racing’s Triple Crown to take place soon – Le Mans. The 2025 edition of the 24 Hours looks like it will see Ferrari at the sharp end of the grid battling for overall victory, with Porsche hoping to take the fight to them, among other manufacturers.

But there is a reason why we singled out the Italian and German marques: It was their battle that made headlines in the build-up to and throughout the 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans. It was the race that Steve McQueen’s iconic movie Le Mans portrays, albeit as a fictional version, and it is considered by many as one of the best racing films of all time.

Many will point to McQueen himself and the Porsche 917 as the legends of 1971’s Le Mans, but there is a good case to be made that the event itself is the actual star of it all.

The Gulf-liveried Porsche 917K became an icon thanks to Steve McQueen’s Le Mans. Image: Curt Smith via Wikimedia Commons, available for distribution under the CC BY 2.0 deed

A Slow Start Until The Start

Le Mans isn’t exactly known for its story. There hardly is one, to be quite honest. Elements of it shine through here and there, but for the most part, it can be broken down into two simple threads of plot: Michael Delaney (McQueen) returns to Le Mans a year after being involved in a crash with Piero Belgetti, who died as a result.

Delaney spots his widow Lisa (Elga Andersen) as he drives into Le Mans, and the two have a few more run-ins during the race. The first of them is the first proper dialogue in the film, by the way, roughly 38 minutes in.

Before that, Delaney drives onto the circuit, a public road still, and stops at a stretch of armco that is visibly newer than the others surrounding it – the scene of the Belgetti crash at Maison Blanche. After that, the event slowly comes alive – spectators wake up on the camping grounds, the track and grandstand itself are filled with life more and more as the start draws closer, and we are introduced to more drivers. Sort of. They are shown, but not really “introduced” as such.

It feels like the viewer is just a quiet observer, a bystander taking in all the hustle and bustle at the Circuit de La Sarthe in 1970. For those who value a plot-driven masterpiece for their moviegoing enjoyment, this might not be of much interest, but for racing fans, it is utterly fascinating to see what Le Mans was actually like at the time.

The movie was shot during and after the actual 1970 race, so it serves as a time capsule, a window to look back into these glory days of sportscar racing. Actual shooting dragged on until November that year, though, so it wasn’t done with a week or so at the track.

McQueen (left) and Rauch during production of Le Mans. Image: Porsche Newsroom

Rain Throughout The Night, Explosive Morning

Once the start is minutes away, the pace picks up, until a crescendo of heartbeats accelerates so much it may well be an engine roaring to life – just like they do on screen seconds later. A trouble-free race start is followed by the first pit stops and driver swaps, then rain starts pouring as dusk sets in.

One of the Porsche 917s, a longtail, retires with engine troubles, as Delaney is interviewed while out of the car. His rivalry with Ferrari driver Erich Stahler is talked about, but it’s less of a factor in the movie than you’d expect – Stahler is not presented as a typical antagonist, but rather as an on-track rival, period. As Delaney puts it when talking about a battle they had at the Nürburgring with Lisa: “Only keeps me honest.”

On the track, Delaney’s #20 Porsche and Stahler’s #8 Ferrari 512S have a close fight for the lead throughout the rain-soaked night. As the darkness gives way to the morning, the rain stops, but the track is still wet. Porsche pulls ahead after a pit stop, but a relatively uneventful race sees one of its major turning points shortly after.

Le Mans as it was raced in 1970 and 1971, the final years before the Porsche Curves replaced the fearsome Maison Blanche. Image: racingcircuits.info

Approaching Indianapolis corner, Stahler has a spin. In trying to avoid the stationary Ferrari, his teammate Claude Aurac (Luc Merenda) goes off as well, ramps off of a dirt wall on the outside of Indianapolis, and comes to a stop outside of the track in his wrecked Ferrari. In slow motion, Aurac gets out of the wrecked car just in time for it to explode in one of the few overly Hollywoodized moments.

Delaney, already accelerating towards Maison Blanche, sees the explosion from the corner of his eye. This short distraction makes him realize he’s closing in on a much slower Porsche 911 too late. Trying to avoid the GT car, he crashes the #20 917. As he is lightly injured but generally okay, it is implied that the crash keeps replaying before his inner eye over and over, which likely has to do with the fatal crash he had been involved in a year earlier.

“What Is So Important About Driving Faster Than Anyone Else?”

While Aurac is seriously injured but supposed to pull through, Delaney is released from the medical center (well, trailer, really) and returns to the pits. Stahler’s car had to get minor repairs and lost some time, so Delaney’s team realizes it still has a shot at winning the race, putting him into one of the remaining two cars they have in the race.

Before this, however, the most dialogue-heavy scene takes place. Lisa Belgetti, who Delaney meets in his trailer, starts wondering why these drivers keep on competing. “When people risk their lives, shouldn’t it be for something very important?”, she ask Delaney. “What is so important about driving faster than anyone else?”

The actual 1970 Le Mans winner driven by Hans Herrmann and Richard Attwood is rarely seen in the movie. Image: Porsche Newsroom

Delaney explains that “A lot of people are going through life doing things badly. Racing is important to men who do it well. When you’re racing, it’s life. Anything that happens before or after, it’s just waiting.” Perhaps one of the most iconic motorsport quotes of all time.

The wait being over for Delaney, he gets in the #21 Porsche for the film’s finale. Just like the #8 Ferrari, the car has mechanical troubles during the stop, so Delaney is put in on short notice to replace Johann Ritter (Fred Haltiner), who at the very start of the film told his wife he would stop racing after Le Mans. Instead, Delaney is told “to drive flat out. I want Porsche to win Le Mans”, by crew chief David Townsend (Ronald Leigh-Hunt).

Porsche Wins, Delaney Does Not

When the two head back out, the #21 Porsche has taken over the lead following a puncture on the #5 Ferrari, so the three-way battle is on. But unlike most Hollywood movies would probably do today, Delaney’s car isn’t the one that comes out on top despite a fierce battle with Stahler. Instead, the #21 leads a Porsche 1-2 ahead of the Ferrari.

As the #21 crew is engulfed in celebrations, Delaney and Stahler show the mutual respect they have for each other in the pits as they look and smile at each other. And with that, the movie ends – no grand, philosophical end scene, just a long list of credits featuring several legendary drivers who drove the cars for the film. Jacky Ickx, Richard Attwood, John Miles and Derek Bell are just a few.

Plenty of real-world greats appear in the movie’s credits. McQueen (sixth from the right) had drivers like Gérard Larrousse (fourth from the left), David Piper (fifth from the left), Derek Bell (fifth from the right, behind McQueen) and Herbert Linge (second from the right) in the cars during filming. Image: Porsche Newsroom

A Film Like Real Racing, In A Way

Hal Hamilton, who played #7 Ferrari driver Chris Barnett, claimed that “we had the star, we had the drivers. We had an incredible array of technical support, we had everything. Except a script”.

For the “normal” movie buff, that would be reason for deducting points in the final rating, probably explaining why Le Mans is only rated at 6.7 out of 10 stars on IMDB. As mentioned earlier, there is practically no story.

But for racing fans, particularly those who are into historic racing, this is rather a bonus. Like John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix, Le Mans is like traveling back in time, only without any side stories distracting from the racing.

Sure, there some peeks into Delaney as a character, particularly in relation to the 1969 accident with Belgetti, but apart from that, the story is told on track for the most part.

In that sense, it’s like real racing: The plot isn’t predefined, but written during the race and around it. In Le Mans’ case, this is done brilliantly as it invites viewers to spot innumerable historical details, starting with the actual cars that competed in the race.

The spotlight is on the big Porsche and Ferrari prototypes, of course, but the smaller 3 and 2-liter prototypes by the likes of Matra, Chevron or Alfa Romeo are also part of the spectacle, as are the GT cars such as the Chevrolet Corvette C3.

The camera car entered by McQueen’s production company. Image: ZANTAFIO56 via Wikimedia Commons, available for distribution under the CC BY-SA 2.0 deed

Movie Or Documentary?

It can almost be viewed as a documentary of the event itself. Plenty of the track and its surroundings as they were for the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1970 are captured at a quality level that was difficult to achieve otherwise at the time, so the atmosphere is simply unmatched.

It’s in the spectators who have come from everywhere (you’ll be able to spot German and British license plates on road cars, for instance), in the way that teams and drivers often converse in their first languages with each other (German and Italian feature frequently) that lends Le Mans this air of authenticity.

So do the racing scenes. They were filmed on the actual track using the actual cars, and there is even footage from the real race in the movie. Like the real 1970 race, much of the movie’s version is rain-soaked, and McQueen’s production company Solar Productions actually entered a Porsche 908/2 equipped with cameras.

Driven by Herbert Linge and Jonathan Williams, part of the car’s pit stop routine was the changing of film reels. However, technical issues meant that most of the captured footage was not usable – still, that’s remarkable dedication to the project. The car managed to complete 282 laps, but was not classified because it did not cover enough distance due to the frequent pit stops. Had it been, it would have scored eight overall.

Personally, I feel like thanks to the almost non-existing story, Le Mans is a movie that is easy to rewatch – if you enjoy excellent racing shots from the period and to soak in the atmosphere of Le Mans as it was in 1970. Sure, it has aged a bit, but there are Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray versions of it available, meaning it is still a visual pleasure despite its age.

Editor’s Take – Luca

“Unlike the last time I handed the keys to these reviews over to Yannik, I have actually seen this movie and it truly made me stop and think about the ways a movie could be done.

A few years ago, I thought a movie could only be good if there was an overarching story moving it along. But Le Mans proves otherwise, that the setting and experience alone can be enough of a spectacle. It is very comparable to Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk as a result, and I wish there were more experiential based movies like Le Mans.

Whilst Rush is still the best depiction of motorsport in a conventional movie, Le Mans is the greatest showcase of a racing experience in a movie that I have ever seen.”