The Racing Scene

The Racing Scene is a 1969 documentary film about actor James Garner and his auto racing team, directed by Andy Sidaris. It was the first film directed by Sidaris, whose background at that time had been in sports broadcasting. The picture offers a glimpse of Garner's role and the teams and cars he sponsored during the middle of three years (1968-1970) his American International Racing team campaigned over a variety of racing series.

Garner wasn't alone in pursuing auto racing as a diversion from movie and TV-making, being joined by such Hollywood figures as comedian Tommy Smothers and big screen action hero Steve McQueen. Garner and Smothers even took the same high-speed driving course together in 1968, run by NASCAR legend and 55-time champion Curtis Turner on the Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina. McQueen, who also raced motorcycles competitively in addition to cars, went on to fund his own Formula racing movie, 1971's Le Mans, about a fictional (1970) 24 Hours of Le Mans in which he raced wheel-to-wheel with some of the top professionals of the day on the actual endurance track in France.

Description


In 1969 James Garner (born 1928) was a veteran Hollywood leading man of both film and television. At the peak of his popularity, he found his interest drifting from his acting career and into the sport of auto racing - in the day an extremely popular international scene in which he had played the starring role as a Formula One champion in the 1966 big screen hit Grand Prix.

Driving actual Formula cars in staged racing sequences for that picture gave him experience in high-adrenalin wheel-to-wheel racing. He caught the bug bad enough that by 1969 he had formed his own racing team and was financing a variety of different platforms in racing series in North America, including getting some limited competitive time of his own behind the wheel.

The Racing Scene is produced in documentary fashion, narrated by Garner, covering a slice of his 1969 racing life as owner of the American International Racing team he had created the year before.

He is first seen roaring across the Mexican outback in a heavily modified 650 horsepower Ford Bronco in the 1969 Baja 1000 offroad race, along with trusted co-driver and "hard-charger" Scooter Patrick. One of six similar Bronco team's he's sponsoring, they come in 4th in their class.

Next he is flying to England and on to Silverstone raceway to check on the shakedown of an open-wheel, 5-litre, V8-powered Formula A car he was having built for his team by Formula One champion John Surtees and top designer Len Terry for North American SCCA Continental Championship Formula 5000 series racing.

Then it's off to Florida, where Garner is seen as an owner amid the pit crew of an endurance racing team campaigning a matching pair of Chevrolet V8-powered Lola T70 Mk 3b coupes at the 1969 24 Hours of Daytona race in Daytona. The $350,000 cars are of last year's design, but their showing is highly encouraging, a 2nd and 7th place. Shortly after the same cars and a different combination of co-drivers are in Sebring, with all the necessary set-up and track modifications for the 12 Hours of Sebring run on an unbanked circuit there. The cars start off well but Patrick drops out early on and the other team ends up placing 7th.

Garner departs the team to make a film in Europe; while he is gone two of his drivers keep busy in various Formula A, Can Am, and Trans Am races, Patrick is winning some in his orbit, and John Surtees has his Team Surtees Formula A cars "running like a bandit" according to Garner, and bagging some hardware on their circuit.

A re-energized Garner is en route over the Golden Gate Bridge to meet his own team at the Sears Point Raceway in northern California, having taken possession of its prize new Surtees Garner TS5 Formula A car (TS for "Team Surtees" and 5 for the maximum engine capacity in litres allowed in Formula 5000, which North American Formula A racing falls under). Powered by a Traco Engineering (of Culver City, California) built 450 hp 302 cu. in. small-block Chevy V8, it needed a complete going over, being busily ramrodded by Patrick. Excited to get behind the wheel for some high-speed laps, Garner confirms the car's going to need some major suspension adjustments ahead of its upcoming debut just a week off, a SCCA Continental Championship Trans Am race at the Lime Rock Park circuit clear across the U.S. in Lime Rock, Connecticut.

After shaking the most obvious bugs out in California Patterson flies east with Garner while the crew tows the car cross-country. Patrick breaks the news en route that the car will be so late in arriving that there will be little time for final adjustments. Compounding things once there, serious unexpected engine problems encountered during qualifying prevent it from even completing its required runs; after some four-figure emergency triage the car starts dead last in a pack of 20 entrants, the penalty for not having qualified. Through skillful and competitive driving by Patrick it moves up to 11th, but before he can place respectably the engine blows and he is out of the race.

Garner returns to California to acquire a replacement, and vents some steam off from his increasingly costly and still only marginally successful racing adventure tearing a sand rail over what appear to be the Algodones Dunes in southeastern California near the Arizona-Mexico border.

Just six days after Lime Rock the crew is back on the track for the St Jovite F5000 in Canada, north of Montreal at the Circuit Mont-Tremblant racetrack at St. Jovite near the Mont Tremblant Resort. It is the 9th of 11 races in the 1969 SCCA Continental Championship season, and the crew has put considerable effort into getting the car right for the course. Believing they are competitive enough to vie for the winner's trophy everyone is hopeful when Patrick takes off 16th in a field of 27 racers. However, tragedy strikes halfway through the 1st lap, an eight-car pileup caused by an out-of-control racer that knocks the Garner car out and sends Patrick back to the pits, thankfully uninjured, understandably disappointed, but focused already on getting ready for the next race.

Saying he's OK with a rough road and its challenges, Garner walks off to take on whatever's next for his racing team, doubling-down with a final affirmation, "This is my road. The one I choose.  The one I follow."

Postscript
Garner's American International Racing team continued entering events through 1970, campaigning (at least) a pair of Eagle-Chevrolets (driven by Davey Jordan and Rex Ramsey) in a total of 17 Formula 5000 races. Jordan entered five, placing as high as 2nd at the Riverside F5000, while Ramsey raced in 12, with a high of 3rd place at the Sears Point F5000.