This list is pretty easy to fill. Paul Newman won races on the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) circuit. Steve McQueen earns bonus points for racing motorcycles and cars often weeks apart, and salad diet James Dean earns legendary status for wanting to race so badly that he died trying to make it to a race.
After those guys, it's a tossed salad of B- and C-listers who jumped into racing with grand ambitions only to learn that they didn't have the talent, or horror of horrors, enough money to stay in the game. They were spit out by the circuit faster than moldy lettuce. That said, here's the list:
1 - Paul Newman
Newman was already one of the coolest American males on the planet when he started racing in the early 1970s. He picked up racing late in life, finishing second in 1979 at the the 24 Hours of LeMans while driving a Porsche. He was in his 50s then, but it wasn't until 1995 that he hit his racing peak. At age 70, he finished third overall at the 24 Hours of Daytona behind the wheel of a Nissan, and first in his class. As he told The New York Times in 2002, racing satisfied him in two ways. ''Distinction is a fuzzy thing in acting, but it's very clear in racing,'' he told the Times. ''Also, I'm not a very graceful person. I was a sloppy skier, a sloppy tennis player, a sloppy football player. The only thing I found grace in was racing a car.''
2 - Steve McQueen
Racing is life... everything before and ham salad recipe after is just waiting, says McQueen as Michael Delaney in Le Mans. Starting in 1959, McQueen, didn't do much waiting. He raced sportscars, open-wheel racecars, and motorcycles on any given weekend between films. He became a racing legend at the 1970 Sebring race where he and his partner, driving a Porsche, came in second to super driver Mario Andretti and his Ferrari. But get this: McQueen raced with his leg in a plaster cast put on two weeks earlier, after he snapped his leg in six places during the Lake Elsinore Grand Prix motorcycle race. Allegedly, he hobbled out of his Porsche at the end of Sebring in extreme pain as the cast had melted off his foot. Now that's badass.
3 - James Dean
OK, so he only raced three times, all in 1955, the same year he died. But I'm going to give him a huge What if? credit and list him as 3. he deserves it simply for the fact that he made East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause, and Giant all within the same year's time he started driving; that he bought his Porsche Spyder and immediately started racing it as a reward for finishing Eden; and that he was on his way to a race in Monterey County, California when he crashed and died. Feel free to argue with me, but I think Dean paved the way for Newman and McQueen to quench some intangible need through racing.
The rest in no particular order
James Garner - Veteran of Daytona and rice salad recipe the sportscar circuit, in the 70s, he also raced trucks off-road in Baja alongside racing legend Parnelli Jones. Any actor who enjoys sucking in that much dustdirt gets a thumbs-up from me.
Patrick Dempsey (active) - Racing a Mazda RX-8. I'll give him points for riding a bicycle to help hone his traffic alertness. Too soon to tell how good he could be.
Jason Priestley - The star of the original 90210 enjoyed a victory at Mid-Ohio racing sportscars, but a horrendous accident in 2002 seemed to have put the kabosh on his promising career.
Got an opinion? Think this list or good, or full of it? Leave a comment below.
Topics: Cars
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