I stopped paying attention to the Academy Awards many years ago, but you're right to say that it did deserve accolades aplenty. The on-track camera work is spectacular and as much of a pleasant surprise at just how competent Hemsworth was as Hunt, Bruhl was astonishing!
Best racing film ever though...well that's a tough one. From a personal perspective, I'd give Le Mans the nod. Make no mistake though, Rush went straight in at number 2 and I'd have absolutely no issue at all with anyone who said it was their number 1.
Don't get me wrong, I have been a huge fan of Hunt ever since I knew what an F1 car was...and that was many decades ago...and was hugely excited when I first heard that this film was going to be made. It didn't disappoint either. There was some poetic license, but to move several seasons worth of back story forwards in a 2 hour film, you're going to need that. On the whole though, it was accurate enough to keep the purist happy, it was beautifully produced, acted with respect and maturity and was smart enough to use real machinery on real tarmac.
But Le Mans...well, why? It's a film riddled with flaws, very little in the way of dialogue and absolutely nothing in the way of a substantial plot. On the face of it, it shouldn't even be in the top 10, let alone the best racing film ever. But it was a film that was born from passion, rather than from fascination. Where as Ron Howarth's fascination of F1, especially the '76 season, began when he was approached to make Rush, McQueen's Le Mans was a love letter to a life long passion.
Rush wasn't an easy film to make, but when you look into the backstory of Le Mans and the lengths McQueen went to just to get the race footage, let alone get the film made and released, it's every bit as fascinating as the film itself. McQueen, not an actor who was really known for being anything but the star of a film deliberately makes himself a mere bit part player in a film where the story of the race itself is the star.
The stories associated with the making of Le Mans are just staggering too! Two of my favorites are an actual race driver complaining that there was a camera man lay in the middle of the track during a live practice session for the actual race. The driver told the film crew to tell McQueen to fire the camera man, to which the film crew told the driver that telling McQueen this would be impossible...since McQueen was currently lay in the middle of the track, camera in hand, trying to get the shots that none of his cameramen were brave...or stupid...enough to do.
The other one being how, as a successful racing driver in his own right, McQueen was desperate to take part in the actual race. The financial backers and his own insurers absolutely forbid him from doing it though. The camera car that was used however was McQueen's own Porsche 908/2 with the camera mounted to the front that was actually entered into the race to get real racing footage. The story is that as there was no way his name would be allowed on the official entry list, he switched places with one of the drivers of the camera car. Sounds far fetched? Well he often changed his name on entry lists to other races and...in one blink and you'll miss it scene, you do see the actual camera car go past the pits when one of the Gulf Team Porsche 917K's is being serviced. The camera car does appear in other scenes, but in this particular scene, the driver's helmet is the same red helmet/white visor that McQueen used when he did race. In the handful of other shots you see with it in, the driver has a pretty nondescript white helmet.
Where as Rush was the story of two drivers, a story that richly deserved the quality that the film delivered, Le Mans was the story of a race, taken from the mind of someone who was a racer himself. There is absolutely nothing I would change about Rush, but for all its faults and flaws, Le Mans is a pure racing film. Because of that, Le Mans just edges it as the best race film for me.
SEX - Breakfast Of Champions!
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