When Hurley Haywood emerged in the racing scene 50 years ago he looked like someone out of central casting. He had the trim frame, the sandy locks, the sapphire eyes. He was the total package, a Paul Newman type who would go on to win titles and Le Mans and race in the Indy 500.

But unlike Newman, who took up racing late in life as preparation for the lead in the 1969 classic Winning and willed himself into a first-rate wheelman, Haywood was a natural. He showed as much while dusting the field in premier endurance races at Le Mans and Daytona. All the while, images of Haywood celebrating victory with a smiling blonde on his arm pervaded, and Penthouse even signed on as a sponsor. Haywood looked like he was living his dream. But to hear him recall that period in his life now, it sounds more like a nightmare. “I was afraid,” he tells the Guardian. “I didn’t want it to get out.”

The it is the fact that Haywood is gay. It’s a fact he went to great lengths to conceal before finally coming out in an autobiography last year. Earlier this year the 71-year-old further unburdened himself in Hurley, a documentary of his life and times that was produced by the actor-racer Patrick Dempsey. Haywood’s story seems well worth revisiting now, with Pride Month coming hot on the heels of the biggest racing weekend of the year, this weekend’s Indy 500. In many ways it’s a story that beggars belief. Haywood, after all, didn’t just hide in plain sight at a time when homophobia was commonplace and panic over the Aids epidemic was reaching fever pitch. He hid in the quien es mas macho world of auto racing, where sex – or heterosexual sex, at least – sells. Chevys and Budweisers and Marlboros, specifically.

Haywood didn’t so much lean into the role of the American James Hunt as let others fill in the blanks in his personality, which were exacerbated by his painful media shyness. As it turns out, success on the track was the perfect cover for Haywood. His first real brush with victory came in college, while kicking around Florida’s autocross scene. It was there that he met – and outdrove – Peter Gregg, an elite endurance racer who came away so impressed that he brought Haywood onto his top-shelf sports car team as a co-driver. Soon thereafter came a victory in their first major event, a world championship at The Six Hours of The Glen in 1969. A month later Haywood was drafted to fight in Vietnam and, unlike too many others, made it back home unscathed after a year at war.

Rather than simply pick up where he left off, he set a new standard, all told claiming checkered flags in the 12 Hours of Sebring (twice), the 24 Hours of Le Mans (three times) and in the 24 Hours of Daytona a record five times. He and Gregg proved to be a dynamic duo, the Batman and Robin of endurance racing. “I loved the rush you got from speed,” Haywood says. “And from beating people.”

And while keeping his head down and his foot firmly on the throttle helped Haywood avoid serious questions about his personal life, he couldn’t help but notice how fearless Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova had been while coming out during their careers. “These women were really sort of the headliners of that whole movement,” says Haywood, who nonetheless couldn’t see himself following in their footsteps. “I didn’t have any gay male role models. I had to deal with all that stuff myself, work through all the problems of what it would be like if I suddenly came out as gay. What would that do? Would I lose all my fans? Would I lose all my sponsors?”

Hurley Haywood (left) with his husband, Steve Hill. Photograph: 1091

Haywood had reason to move cautiously. His sexuality became an open secret around the paddock, and embellishing on his truth became something of a sport onto itself. Among other things Hurley addresses is industry speculation at the time that Haywood and Gregg were more than just close friends and co-drivers. (Both Haywood and people close to Gregg, who took his own life in 1980, deny they were in a relationship.) The documentary also spends time with Haywood’s husband and partner of three decades, Steve Hill, whose perspectives on Haywood’s post-race celebrations (which Hill watched through the chain-linked fence around victory lane), and on Haywood’s old habit of switching his wedding band from his left to his right hand to throw off the scent provide rare insight into what it means to be a closeted sports hero.

Haywood was convinced that by “being as inconspicuous as I could,” he could maintain the status quo. He kept teammates on a need-to-know basis. “There was only one person out of the hundreds of people that I’ve raced with in my entire career that had a hard time accepting that,” Haywood says. “And I told them: ‘if you don’t wanna drive with me, then that’s your problem.’” He was careful not to involve the aristocratic family he left behind in Chicago. “The pressure that I was under...” he says. When he broke the news to them “my stepfather was completely against it. My mother was understanding but not necessarily accepting at the beginning.” He stowed away with racing teams in Europe, where he found the culture to be vastly more accommodating.

One suspects Hurley, who retired from racing in 2012, might never have come out publicly if a high schooler interviewing him for an assignment hadn’t drawn a confession. Their conversation started with the usual questions about Haywood’s staggering career achievements. But then midway through, Haywood says, “I just sort of vividly remember he stopped cold in his tracks, looked directly at me and said, ‘I have been bullied my entire life. Every morning I wake up and feel like I’m absolutely useless. I’m gay and I just don’t know where to go and what to do. I feel like I’m totally worthless.’ I told him, it’s not what you are, it’s who you are. It’s the who that people remember. If you allow that barrier to prevent your forward movement, you’re never gonna accomplish anything.”

The boy seemed to take encouragement from those words, but Haywood spent years without knowing for sure until his mother called out of the blue. “I just want to let you know what you told my son saved his life,” she said. Those words floored Haywood. That’s when he started thinking, Maybe if I can help one kid, then I can help two or 10 or 100. “That was the reason I decided to come out publicly,” he says. “I didn’t want to lie about it anymore.” And now that he’s out, he’s hoping he can be the gay male role model that he never had. “I think one of the problems that gay people face is how they are portrayed by television and by movies and the press,” he says. “It’s always kind of a negative image of a gay person, and gay people are in roles that are obviously gay. I always find that disturbing because I know lots of very, very successful gay people who are in every form of business that you can think of, and that are not your typical gay personality or [have] gay traits”

And yet for all of Haywood’s good intentions, the odds of him inspiring one similarly prominent auto racer to go public with their own coming out story seem slim. After all, auto racing is still sold through heterosexual men. But they don’t play into the Penthouse fantasy of the caddish speed racer who chases skirts with a beer in one hand and cigarette in the other anymore. They stand tall on the starting grid with their wife or girlfriend at their side and their children at their feet. It’s a family values sport now, which could make it even tougher for the next Hurley Haywood to break through – especially in this recessive sponsorship climate. But the progress the sport has made in providing opportunities to racers who aren’t straight white males give him hope for the future. “Racing is evolving,” he says. “I think those barriers that stand in the way are gradually being knocked down.”