Been a flurry of motorsport stuff on here lately, so to add to it iPlayer currently has the Steve McQueen classic on there at the moment.
I remember seeing it in a very loud showing at the cinema when it was released. Glorious noises.

Awesome stuff – great sounds and the best made-up crash sequence ever! 🙂

It is so good, the crash especially is amazing- absolutely traumatic feeling, even more so once you’ve done it yourself (though, not so spectacularly! But, it’s the best depiction of the experience of crashing I’ve ever seen I think. where everything else just wants to show the crash itself because crashes are cool

Love that film, very immersive, very little dialogue, it’s literally all about the racing. Time to dust off the DVD again methinks.

That silent loud silent crash is probably my favourite cinematic scene.

Also the intro… when did films stop using just simple shots.

Can I do some “did you know”s…? 🙂

The “917” that Delaney crashes is actually a yellow Lola T70 that’s seen elsewhere in the film – you can see flashes of yellow bodywork during the crash sequence. They put radio control into it to crash it, but the throttle stuck during the crash and they had no way to shut it off, you can see the rears still spinning as the car comes to a halt and they’re flat in the long shots of the smoking, post-crash car.

One of the mechanics on the film got fired for borrowing a 512 and taking into town to pick up his date one night.

Actual race footage was used in the film – pretty sure Solar were able to borrow plenty of Gulf 917Ks and 512s, but they couldn’t get the white factory langheck, so any shots of that are from the race.

David Piper crashed one of the 917s on the way into a racing sequence and lost part of his leg.

One of the 512s spontaneously combusted during filming one day – the very same car was later owned by Nick Mason off of Pink Floyd.

I love that film. 🙂

Edit – ooo, Steve McQueen was a decent amateur race driver and DID race Le Mans, can’t remember if it was the year filmed in the race. He had the option of a 917, but choose a 908 as it was significantly less like to kill him. He did drive 917s for the film.

I assume you’ll have checked this out?

Love that film & Steve McQueen was cool as in it.
It/he inspired my custom jersey from FKD that I won in the TotalMTB charity Christmas raffle: