Long before director Roger Donaldson made his name in Hollywood at the helm of films including The World's Fastest Indian, Bounty, Cocktail and Dante's Peak, among many others, he was what you might call a bit of a car nut.
As a teenager he recalls seeing New Zealand's Bruce McLaren racing at Sandown Park in Melbourne, making notes in a diary he kept at the time alongside notes he'd also made about English greats Stirling Moss, Jimmy Clark and Australia's Jack Brabham.
Bruce McLaren was, quite literally, the driving force behind one of the most recognised names in Formula One racing; a team that's boasted drivers such as Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, James Hunt, Lewis Hamilton, Niki Lauda, Nigel Mansell and many, many more in the decades since McLaren burst onto the world stage.
Born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1937; McLaren was barely out of his teens when he turned a short, successful few years of racing at home into a launching pad for his all too brief, yet enormously successful career as an F1 driver, engineer and race car designer.
"Bruce's star burned bright. He seemed to me like James Dean, Buddy Holly or Marilyn Monroe," Donaldson said, adding "those characters, those people who made such an impression in a short period of time, Bruce was one of those people. It's hard to believe he packed so much into 15 years, from the first time he raced cars until the end."
McLaren was 32, having competed in 100 F1 races and countless more categories, while also building the McLaren Racing team, when he was killed during testing at the Goodwood Circuit in England in 1970. He was also a husband, father, loyal friend and much respected colleague of those who worked alongside him, as both a driver and team boss.
"One of the things I was determined to do with this story," Donaldson says, "was to make it for people who really couldn't give a shit about car racing, cause there's a lot of them. I thought the story could be a metaphor for what do you do with your life ... the risks you have to take to succeed, the story behind the story ... about the passion of this guy and his team."
The names of those mechanics, designers and other drivers who appear throughout the documentary, painting Donaldson's highly personal picture of McLaren, may not be household names but they provide a wonderful insight to the man.
"I feel that life is measured in achievement, not in years alone," McLaren is quoted as saying at one stage following the death of a friend and fellow driver. It's entirely apt when telling the story of Bruce McLaren, whose eye for detail extended to the Kiwi that adorned the first McLaren logo.
"For me the movie ... is also about youth and old age," Donaldson says. "Reminiscing about the past and coming to terms with what you did, the impact you made, the risks you took and what you got away with ... They had a good time."
McLaren opens in limited release on June 21.