Actor Michael Fassbender Totals Porsche In Scary Crash While Racing At Le Mans

Getty Image

Most people know Michael Fassbender as the actor who portrayed Magneto in multiple films in the X-Men franchise and donned Steve Jobs’ signature black turtleneck in the eponymous biopic about the man who helped transform Apple into one of the biggest companies on the planet.

However, like most people, the German thespian has plenty of other interests outside of his professional career—which includes a lifelong love of auto racing (an affinity he shares with Frankie Muniz).

Fassbender got the chance to start training with Ferrari’s Formula 1 team in 2016 and has since gotten the opportunity to participate in dozens of races around the globe.

The actor has been affiliated with Porsche since 2019 and has been a member of the company’s Proton Competition team since 2020, and last year, he got the chance to partake in the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans as one of the three drivers tasked with navigating a Porsche 911 RSR-19 around the iconic track for a full day.

Fassbender headed back to France this month to take on the circuit for a second year in a row as a participant in the 91st running of Le Mans (a race that also marked the 100th anniversary of the first event that was organized all the way back in 1923).

This year’s showdown officially kicked off on June 10th, and while Fassbender was able to mostly hold his own during his six-hour stint behind the wheel, things literally took a turn for the worse on Sunday when he lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a wall 15 minutes before he was scheduled to hit pit row for a driver swap.

Fassbender was thankfully able to emerge unscathed, although the same couldn’t be said for the Porsche he’d been piloting, as Proton announced the team was forced to withdraw from the competition after determining there were “no chances to repair the damage.”