Page 12 - One Last Turn

at Mexico City where he found the high- altitude thin air to be no handicap, having grown accustomed to it in his hometown.
Adding some Glamor to Racing: Steve McQueen and James Garner In the 1970 racing season, Harvey assisted Steve McQueen in getting his Porsche 908/2 ready to race. Harvey also had an occasion to talk with James Garner at events. He said of McQueen and fellow actor James Garner, that he found them both to be “real nice guys,” easy to talk to, no pretensions, and
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genuinely interested in racing and race
cars. McQueen, a good driver, actually won a couple of local SCCA races in the Porsche as well as taking second in the Sebring 12 Hours that year, co-driving with Peter Revson. It was all part of the buildup to the Le Mans movie which was filmed that summer.
While McQueen was filming in France, races went on and Harvey was in the middle of them, supporting other drivers as well as driving himself. At one typically hot Riverside race in mid-1969,
Harvey was crewing for drivers Doug Hooper and Eric Hauser, and both had repeated car problems. Keeping them on the course was almost too much, and then when Harvey’s own engine blew, he lacked the time to fix it and had to sit out his race. The small crews and budgets the teams had during the era often meant round-the-clock work for race preparation, the fact that Harvey mixed those crew responsibilities with prepping and racing his own car was downright incredible.
Harvey Lasiter then sold his McLaren without an engine in 1970 for $5,000, using the money to buy the ex-Scooter Patrick Surtees TS5 F-5000 race car from actor James Garner. He raced it a few times in 1969 and 1970 F-5000 Southern California events. A newspaper clipping from 1970 reporting on the July 4 Riverside Nationals reports that Harvey had a 20-second lead in the Formula 5000 (A) event but then lost oil pressure and had to stop. He later heard Garner say on the Johnny Carson Show that he had sold the car to some “sucker.” Garner eventually came to the Hooper Corvette shop and saw the car in rebuild and struck up a conversation with Harvey, who was working on it at the time. After being reminded of his earlier remark on the Carson show, Garner then went out, bought a 12-pack of beer, came back and a conversation on racing ensued that lasted for hours, causing Harvey to miss an important dinner date with his wife.
Doug Hooper (left) and Harvey Lasiter at a testing session for Hooper’s Lola T70 in 1968.
(Harvey Lasiter collection)
Harvey Lasiter
ONE LAST TURN
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