Actor Michael Fassbender stars in ‘Road to Le Mans’ YouTube series

The line of succession for Hollywood actors doubling as professional racing drivers has gained another prince in Michael Fassbender. The man most recently known as Magneto in “X-Men: Dark Phoenix” is the star of a new YouTube series called “Road to Le Mans.” Produced by Porsche, the episodic follows the early steps of Fassbender’s continuing journey from novice pilot to eventual (cross fingers) Le Mans competitor. The first trailer has hit the streaming site, letting us know the premiere episode arrives October 11. 

Other than the pilot date, the trailer doesn’t give away any of the usual secrets like plot, run time, or number of installments. Nor are we sure what the series is about, specifically. Our guess is that it covers Fassbender’s current season of racing in the Porsche Super Sports Cup in Germany, driving the #93 911 GT3 Cup for the Manthey Racing Team, but we’ll find out in nine days.

Lest anyone think Fassbender’s only behind the wheel because of an A-list name and an A+ smile, the Irish-Austrian actor say he’s always dreamed of top-flight racing. A story in the Hollywood Reporter claims Fassbender “possesses an encyclopedic, arcane knowledge of 1980s Group B rally racing” and spent his early 20s “in Ireland glued to the TV watching Michael Schumacher win one F1 title after another.” In 2015, Ferrari North America invited the actor to enter the six-race Ferrari Challenge series, so in 2016 Fassbender began training. According to Driver Database, in 2017 and 2018 he competed in 11 races, won one and got on the podium five times. Not bad for a racing junkie who didn’t own a car for 20 years, then jumped into hi-po ownership with a Ferrari F12 TDF.

This year he switched to the European series with Porsche, and the results hint at a grinding campaign, with 4.2 points from six races, no wins and no podiums. The theatrical chameleon — whose lucky number is three — seems to have the necessary perspective, though. In 2018, when asked what he’d learned about racing so far, he replied, “I’ve learned that I’m always two seconds off where I need to be.” A year later, as he says in the trailer, he knows he’s still only at the beginning of the trail that leads to the Circuit de la Sarthe.