How F1 Went Hollywood

Yahoo

20 hours ago

Damson Idris and Brad Pitt play teammates at odds in F1 Credit - Courtesy of Warner Bros.
Formula One teams treat their trade secrets like matters of national security. In a motor-sport where milliseconds separate champions from also-rans, hiding technical know-how from opponents is as key as a fresh pair of tires. So when Joseph Kosinski, director of F1 the Movie—the summer-blockbuster hopeful starring Brad Pitt and hitting theaters and IMAX on June 27—tried to gain access to the inner workings of Formula One, a rush of déjà vu hit him. After all, Kosinski made Top Gun: Maverick, the 2022 naval-aviator smash that grossed $1.5 billion, with the support of the U.S. Department of Defense. 'It was the same level of security,' he says, 'that I experienced when I went to some secret bases.'
Kosinski spent a year bugging Toto Wolff, team principal of the Mercedes–AMG Petronas F1 team, for permission to film at the Mercedes race simulator. Most Mercedes employees themselves can't access this space at headquarters, 70 miles northwest of London. But Wolff finally relented. So in the movie viewers will see Pitt and Damson Idris, who respectively play Sonny Hayes and Joshua Pearce, drivers for the fictional APXGP team, practicing on Mercedes' high-priced toys. 'We were keen on contributing to making this a success,' says Wolff, who along with F1 president and CEO Stefano Domenicali is credited as an executive producer. 'And that means you cannot be half pregnant and say, 'Yeah, we're playing along, but no, we don't want to let you into our factory.''
The F1 filmmakers still made post-production alterations to protect Mercedes' intellectual property. All sides had to compromise, and deliver, in unique ways to bring F1 to life. It was all part of a delicate balancing act between a big-budget production team, led by Jerry Bruckheimer, used to calling its own shots, and a $3.4 billion sport with a dedicated global fan base, whose participants could not afford distractions just to appear in some Hollywood fantasy. Sure, F1 was allowed to bring its cast and crew to actual races across the globe. But they'd have to film during downtime at the track, or just blend into the background. 'The live sport,' says Domenicali, 'I cannot touch.'
The stakes were similarly high in a movie industry where original stories struggle to compete with familiar IP; box-office success would be meaningful for future original ideas. And the involvement of Apple, whose studio arm backed the film—which will live on Apple TV+ after F1's Warner Bros. Pictures–distributed theatrical run—added another element of complexity. 'It was very, very complicated trying to have Apple and F1, two massive organizations that are very controlling of their own brands, to play along,' says Kosinski. 'But the fact that Stefano had the vision for the film, and Apple took the gamble on this movie, here we are, four years later. We're about to take it out to the world.'
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F1's origin story begins a decade ago, when Kosinski was developing a script called 'Go Like Hell,' which later became the 2019 Oscar-winning auto-racing hit Ford v Ferrari. Kosinski had Tom Cruise and Pitt attached to the roles that would eventually be played by Matt Damon and Christian Bale. Cruise and Pitt even did a script read at Cruise's house. But Kosinski dropped out, mainly over budget conflicts, and turned his attention to Top Gun with Cruise and Bruckheimer. During the pandemic, Kosinski caught the racing bug again while bingeing Formula One: Drive to Survive, Netflix's series chronicling Formula One's behind-the-scenes intrigue. Kosinski emailed seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton, a cinephile who planned to join the Top Gun cast before realizing he couldn't swing that and chase championships. Kosinski told him he needed his help making the most authentic auto-racing movie ever.
Kosinski got Hamilton—a producer on the film who makes a cameo—Bruckheimer, and Pitt on board. The goal was to gain access to F1 races and factories so they wouldn't have to CGI the whole thing. In early 2022, Kosinski, Bruckheimer, and Pitt met with Domenicali in London. Domenicali accompanied Kosinski and Pitt at a private Top Gun screening, to give the F1 boss a taste of the whizbang effect such a film could bring to his sport. He saw the potential. A movie fronted by Pitt could corral a mass audience and leave them wanting to know more about F1. 'This has always been the strategy,' says Domenicali. 'To connect with new people, new markets.'
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Still, some F1 race teams remained skeptical. They were nervous about being portrayed in an unflattering light. 'Somebody's got to be the villain,' says Bruckheimer. And while there is a minor character, unassociated with any actual F1 race team, who emerges as a foil to Hayes, Bruckheimer made clear that the story centers on the tension between two drivers, the aging Hayes and the up-and-comer Pearce, on the same fictional team. That's a familiar dynamic: both drivers are seeking individual success, and want to beat the pants off the other guy. At least nominally, however, they're supposed to play nice on the track. At Mercedes, for example, Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, the 2016 F1 champion, famously clashed. 'It became real hostile,' recalls Wolff.
Mercedes helped convert cars from Formula Two, the minor-league circuit, into machines that could pass for F1 cars. The filmmakers had a half-dozen at their disposal: if they wanted to film a scene in which Pitt's APXGP car passes a Ferrari, they'd stage that action with their own cars at an F1 track between practice and qualifying sessions before a race. Later, they would 'skin' the Ferrari design over the production car to make it look like a Ferrari on the screen. (Kosinski used this skinning technique with the Top Gun jets.) They could also capture actual race footage and skin the APXGP car over the Red Bulls and Ferraris. The production team installed 15 camera mounts on its cars, filming with up to four at once, to capture Pitt and Idris in their cockpits, and action on the track. 'Brad Pitt, he's driving the car,' says Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of services. 'It's not blue screen or CGI.' Both actors learned to drive as fast as 180 m.p.h., not too far off from real F1 drivers' top speeds of around 220 m.p.h.
'These guys were fast,' says Javier Bardem, who plays Ruben Cervantes, the owner of the struggling APXGP team who recruits Pitt's Hayes, at a Florida coin laundry, in a Hail Mary attempt to lift his squad. 'The first time I saw them racing, I said to Joe, 'What's insurance got to say about that?' Joe goes, 'What insurance?''
F1 filmed at 14 races during the 2023 and 2024 F1 seasons, across three continents. The production reportedly cost more than $200 million. During some races, APXGP had their own garage, paddock, and perch along the pitwall, where the fictional team principal, technical director, and race engineers sit. 'We designed it ourselves,' says Bruckheimer. 'One of the Mercedes designers came in there and said, 'Sh-t, I'm going to lose my job.''
Much like the actual Formula One drivers, the actors needed to be on their games—even the ones who never sat in the driver's seat. Right before the start of the 2023 British Grand Prix, F1 shot a scene in which Cervantes introduces Hayes to a team board member, played by Tobias Menzies. It was like performing a live stage play in front of more than 150,000 spectators: Formula One wasn't about to hold up the race for repeated takes. 'It was terrifying,' says Bardem. 'I kept telling myself, 'Don't f-ck it up, Javier. Don't f-ck it up.'' He didn't.
The production crescendoed in Abu Dhabi last December, when, after the actual podium celebration recognizing Lando Norris' victory, Charles Leclerc of Ferrari, Mercedes' George Russell, and one of the APXGP drivers mounted the podium to celebrate the fake F1 finish. Wolff filmed his cameo in Abu Dhabi: he tells Idris' Pearce to call him if he wants to jump ship to Mercedes. Wolff wasn't impressed with his own work. 'I don't think I'm going to follow Arnold Schwarzenegger as the next big Austrian thing,' he says with his pronounced accent.
While the film puts a premium on authenticity to please the carheads, it also strives to attract general moviegoers, with its soaring Hans Zimmer score, high-speed crashes, the Hayes-Pearce conflict, and a romance between Hayes and the team's technical director, Kate McKenna (Oscar nominee Kerry Condon). The sensitivities surrounding a workplace relationship between F1's (fictional) first female team tech director and one of her drivers—which would seem quite scandalous if it went public in real life—did cross Kosinski's mind. But when he floated it to F1 insiders, no one objected. Romances within the tight-knit world are relatively common. 'I'm not worried,' says Domenicali. 'And by the way, it gives you the right Hollywood touch.'
The producers insist feedback has been positive. According to Domenicali and Cue, when test audiences unfamiliar with F1 are asked, after watching, if anyone would now be interested in attending a race, hands go up. Stakeholders also hope it gives diverse audiences the itch to work in the industry. 'It's going to inspire female engineers and mechanics,' says Hamilton. 'It's going to inspire people from all over, from all different backgrounds.'
Sounds like lofty expectations for popcorn fare. But the F1 portrayed on the big screen—globe-trotting from Italy to Japan to Vegas to the Middle East, with its fireworks on and off the track—undoubtedly has its upsides.
Aerodynamics lesson, anyone?
Write to Sean Gregory at [e-mail].