Le Mans was the movie Steve McQueen most wanted to make. The ultimate bloke’s bloke was mates with Jackie Stewart and John Whitmore before they were Sirs, he raced his own Formula Junior Cooper and Mini Coopers, came second in his own 3-litre Porsche 908 at Sebring in 1970 with Peter Revson, and even entered a Porsche 917 at Le Mans that year with Stewart as co-driver to gather front-line footage for his movie, only for his insurance company to pull the plug. It wasn’t all ‘brash Yank’ Hollywood with McQueen.

Le Mans would be the 20th movie in his career. His top movies were Bullitt where he drove the lead car action sequences himself and The Great Escape where everyone remembers his motorcycle jump to freedom… except he wasn’t on the bike. He had tumbled in testing and wasn’t allowed to risk his neck, reputation and cinema sales by hurting himself.

The 24-hour race at Le Mans had always fascinated McQueen and his experience over 12 hours at Sebring whetted his appetite. He wanted to bring the thrill to the big screen. He used to say that he wanted to make his grandmother in Montana, who knew nothing about motor sport, understand what happened in a racing car on the Mulsanne Straight at night. In fact he never had a grandmother in Montana. It was a figure of speech. “There’s so much about racing that’s real and doesn’t have to be dramatised or invented,” he said. “There’s the memorisation of the circuit… driving as far as you can see by the beams of your lights… the flash in your mirror as the faster car comes by…”