Racer Steers Clear of Name Recognition

A sprint for Super Vee racing cars, the Triple-A of motor racing, will be a preliminary at next weekend’s Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. One driver will be in that field because he’s quick, aggressive and paying the risky dues required to one day drive at Indianapolis.

“To me, racing cars is much more important than any other career,” he says. “So I’m holding off the other profession in the hope that something clicks in racing.”

This driver also will compete in Saturday’s Toyota Pro-Celebrity race, a fun and publicity dash around the Long Beach course. He was invited as a celebrity. But in practice, he ran faster than Dan Gurney, a Formula One legend. The celebrity was recast. He will now race in the professional flight against Gurney and Parnelli Jones.

“To me, that really means something,” he said. The expression is full. Pride. Some sadness. “It means that on a minuscule scale, they are taking me for my driving ability and not my name.”

The name is Chad McQueen. He is 26. He is the son of Neile Toffel and the late Steve McQueen.

And because of that parentage, he has rejected movie roles, agents’ pleas, personal appearances, even events indulging his passion for motor sports if they show someone reaching morbidly through him to capitalize on a dead father.

“I’m not out here to sell through my pop. Besides, he would have hated me for it. No, I’m out to do everything myself, to stand on my own. The test is asking myself: ‘If my name were Chad Jones, would I be in exactly the place I am now?’ ”

So far, McQueen hasn’t struggled for an answer.

He has appeared in movies (both episodes of “Karate Kid”) but as an apprentice flexing lessons learned from Lee Strasberg. Not as Chad McQueen, son of . . .

As a competition minibiker he was rich in sponsors--because he was a national champion at 12.

Now the involvement is motor racing--not in emulation of dad, but from a five-year schooling, from racing Formula Fords and Super Vees to co-driving a Porsche 944 in a 24-hour endurance event.

Steve McQueen, an accomplished racer, died in 1980. He did not see his son work as a driver. But he certainly set a young boy’s fascination for machines and Chad McQueen remembers the precise moment of inspiration.

“I was about 9 and was with Dad in France filming ‘Le Mans.’ I watched him driving a Porsche 917 down the Mulsanne Straight. He slowed down, pulled a doughnut on the track and waved me over. He sat me on his lap and then floored it at about 200 m.p.h. the wrong way up Mulsanne.

“I got all hyped and entered a race against other kids in go-carts like little sports racers. I won.”

As a teen-ager, Chad McQueen’s interest became an addiction. He remembers discussing career preferences with his father and saying he’d rather win one Indianapolis 500 than a pair of Oscars.

“He said: ‘OK, then you’ll go to the (Bob) Bondurant School (of Performance Driving).’ Then he got ill and, well, the timing wasn’t right. Then he died. Then my head wasn’t on tight for a long time.”

Chad McQueen misses his father’s love. One of dad’s polished, blood-red, antique motorcycles, a 1914 Indian, is in the lobby of his house in North Malibu. He has the Porsche Speedster his father owned from new. “One day,” says McQueen, “I will give it to my son.”

There remains, however, the constant boxing with his father’s shadow. He anguished for months and remains uneasy with his commitment to star as Brad Bullitt, son of Detective Frank Bullitt, in a movie leaning on his father’s role.

But he has told himself that “Bullitt II” isn’t a cheap remake. The writing is good, he reasons. The role, he says, may even be a challenge Steve McQueen would want him to accept. Because success or failure will be up to Chad McQueen.

After all, that’s how father-son combinations work in motor racing.

“If you’re good, it doesn’t matter who your dad is,” said McQueen. “Look at Michael Andretti and Al Unser Jr. They’re winning drivers because they’re good, not because their dads were good.”

Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, April 3-5. Information: (213) 437-0341. Tickets: (213) 436-9953 .