F1 teams opened their doors for Brad Pitt's new movie – and sparked competitive paranoia

New York Times

5 hours ago

In their bid to make the new F1 movie starring Brad Pitt the most authentic racing film of all time, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Joe Kosinski were eager to get as close to the action as possible.
The team behind Top Gun: Maverick went to considerable lengths to make the film as true to life as possible – and certain spoilers on how they did this in the plot are included below.
Advertisement
Pitt and co-star Damson Idris trained to become racing drivers, getting behind the wheel of cars that were designed specifically for the film. And seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton was onboard as a producer to provide a keen eye (and ear) to pick out smaller details, such as ensuring cars sounded like they were in the correct gear for specific corners, or whether a certain tire strategy was feasible.
But one of the biggest assets to make the movie this way was the ability to use the F1 paddock itself, the center of the sport's universe on any given race weekend, as a living, breathing movie set.
F1's willingness to open the paddock doors to the film-makers on grand prix weekends helped provide a level of authenticity that hasn't been seen in other recent sports movies. The fictional APXGP team simply became part of the real-world travelling circus, complete with its own garage setup and hospitality unit at select races across 2023 and 2024.
But Bruckheimer, Kosinski and co didn't stop there in their bid to ensure the film's 'sets' were as authentic as possible. They also made use of three F1 team factories in the UK to shoot scenes and provide an extra layer of realism.
The most recognisable F1 factory belongs to McLaren. The McLaren Technology Center in Woking cost an estimated £300million ($410m) to build, with its glass windows overlooking a lake that runs alongside the factory. Ron Dennis, the former McLaren boss, was very particular in his desire for detail, meaning every element of the factory's design was done with both function and aesthetics in mind. Parts of the MTC have already been used in multiple movies and TV series, including Andor and Fast and Furious: Hobbs and Shaw, thanks to its impressive architecture.
The MTC was therefore an easy choice to establish shots of APXGP's factory for a blockbuster audience, with its first movie look coming when Joshua Pearce (Idris) arrives in a car that drives along the path next to the lake.
Advertisement
A large APXGP sign was added outside the sliding glass doors that form the factory's main entrance in real life. On the inside, the orange hues of McLaren's famed boulevard that contains its most famous F1 cars were replaced with the APXGP color scheme, plus a giant blow-up photo of Pearce and Sonny Hayes (Pitt) stood side-by-side. Not an Oscar Piastri or Lando Norris in sight.
But as Pearce steps further into the factory to meet with the team members as they're introduced to Hayes, there's another change in location — this time to Mercedes' factory in Brackley, more than 70 miles away from Woking.
The race bays at Mercedes' factory, which were actually updated ahead of the 2021 season, are already a clinical black and white – perfectly fitting the APXGP theme. The overlooking balconies also offered a perfect spot for the extras posing as team members to gather.
A third different F1 factory then gets used just a few scenes later when Hayes visits the APXGP wind tunnel to speak to the technical director (Kate McKenna, played by Kerry Condon) about the car design.
This scene is set in Williams' factory in Grove, Oxfordshire, which is 35 miles away from Mercedes (and 56 from McLaren, in Surrey). But using the wind tunnel was significant given this is typically one of the most off-limits places in any F1 factory due to the sensitivity of what happens in such areas.
A team will tend to use wind tunnel models, at 60 percent the size of a full F1 car, to test their designs in carefully controlled runs within F1's technical rules. Even some team members will never have been into these rooms.
'They could have done a set, but they wanted to replicate, or be exactly in, the environment,' explained Williams team principal James Vowles. 'I quite like that they wanted to be authentic by using a real tunnel.
Advertisement
'They needed a bit of our assistance to run the tunnel and get set up in there. They (also) wanted a model that reflected their car, so we helped in that circumstance. There are a few things we helped line up with them. But they're the film-makers, we're not, so we left it to them.'
The crew set up camp in Williams' car park for four days to complete their wind tunnel filming. Although Williams took a small payment, Vowles said the team 'didn't make any money out of it,' and also noted the drawbacks of taking away four potential days for wind tunnel testing for his team's 2026 F1 car.
But it all attracted the attention of F1's rule makers at the FIA, which sets strict limits on what teams can and cannot do with their wind tunnel testing — given how valuable each usage run is to the design of a car.
So deep is the competitive paranoia in F1 that when Williams informed the FIA of its plans to host the film's production in its tunnel, it sparked an inspection and an array of questions.
'There are exceptions, which is work under certain circumstances, which this was under as well,' said Vowles. 'Anything you do in that circumstance allows you to not count it under the cost cap in terms of timing. It helps other teams more than ourselves in that circumstance.'
One step Williams had to take was ensuring the model of the APXGP car — itself not fully compliant with the F1 regulations given its slightly different dimensions, fitting somewhere between F1 and F2 — was different enough that it could offer no advantage to the team or any learnings that could be applied to its 2025 car.
'The model had to be effectively not an exact replica of what we're doing,' Vowles said. 'If you look at their car, there are some differences to it, and it had to be done under FIA supervision at the same time — very much hand in hand with making sure we didn't breach any of the regulations.
Advertisement
'Even though the (wind tunnel) fan was on, we did it in a way that was compliant with what they were looking for, and the car didn't replicate enough in the key areas of what we're looking for either.'
Although there was always going to be some degree of inconvenience giving over such a crucial part of the Williams factory to a film crew, Vowles' faith in the movie was such that he couldn't pass on an opportunity for his team to be part of it.
'I think the F1 film is going to be as important for us as Netflix (with 'Drive to Survive') was in terms of expanding out the audience viewership that we had and making it wider,' Vowles said. 'It's quite nice to have a little piece of us contained in there, too.'
The same rings true for the wider F1 community, with all 10 teams getting some kind of airtime through the movie thanks to the fashion in which the film-makers were embedded within the paddock. There was no need to employ actors to pose as rival team principals, as F1's actual team principals to take part in some scenes.
Mercedes F1 chief Toto Wolff, McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown and Ferrari's Fred Vasseur all have brief speaking roles in the film. Ex-Haas F1 team boss Gunther Steiner also pops up briefly, while other scenes with team chiefs that were filmed, including one with Christian Horner on the grid at Monza in 2023, never made it into the final cut.
Although the fact the team principals are playing themselves might go over the heads of movie-goers with no F1 knowledge, it will be appreciated by fans of the sport and undoubtedly adds to the authenticity element — and was a fun moment for them, too.
Vasseur joked he was 'looking for a new job' when asked about his cameo, in which he delivers a brief yet cutting comment on APXGP's prospects. 'I only had to say two words!' Vasseur said, laughing, then noting that had he given the line in Italian, it would only be one word. 'It was not a huge experience, but it went pretty well.'
Advertisement
To Vowles, the most impressive element of the on-site filming at races for the F1 movie was the seamless integration with the regular goings-on of a race weekend.
Even an ambitious scene filmed on the starting grid at Silverstone, which required the two APXGP cars to be lined up at the rear of the field just minutes before the start of the British Grand Prix in 2023, was pulled off without disrupting the race itself.
'You have to remember, for a lot of the scenes, they only had one shot, one take, and that was it,' Vowles said. 'We're not going to go back to the start of the race and do it again. They just had to pick up their imagery. And that's what impressed me with it.
'If you get involved in films, you realize they do about 40 takes. Even when we do our own work, we do 40 takes. They didn't. They got it done on time and did it right. It's quite impressive.'