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Brad Pitt's F1 movie uses Daytona, Rolex 24 and IMSA as a launch pad
There are two ways to look at the opening moments of Brad Pitt's newly released F1 racing movie.
For locals, particularly those who spent week after week after week passing the filming location on U.S. 1 in New Smyrna Beach, you have to marvel at the modern Hollywood budget. All those people, all that time, for just 10-plus minutes at the start of the movie?
But for one specific local, you can't put a dollar figure on the high-octane salvos that actually preceded the opening credits of 'F1 the Movie.'
David Pettit is senior vice president, marketing and business operations, for Daytona Beach-based IMSA, the sports-car arm of NASCAR whose properties include the Rolex 24 at Daytona.
As the movie was hitting theaters nationwide late last week, Pettit was coming off a splashy premiere in New York City that included lots of promotional work in Times Square (what Pettit's world refers to as 'consumer activation').
Shortly thereafter, he had a phone call with a potential IMSA client, headquartered in New York, who confessed he wasn't too familiar with IMSA or sports-car racing.
'So I said, 'You're in New York City, right? Did you see all the hubbub about the F1 movie?'' Pettit recalls. 'They said, 'Can't wait to see that.' And I said, 'Well, the opening 12½ minutes were shot in Daytona, and the racing you see is our product.' It's a way to introduce the product to another audience, and for me, that's what excited me the most.'
Proving that deadlines are as flexible as budgets in Hollywood, original talks between movie producers and the Daytona folks date back to 2022. Those talks eventually led to Brad Pitt and dozens upon dozens of production workers making camp at Daytona and New Smyrna Beach in early 2024.
They found, for their needs, the perfect off-track setting at the old Pappas restaurant and next-door laundromat in NSB. For on-track needs, Daytona International Speedway and the 2024 Rolex 24 were put to use in grand fashion — the Rolex served as another one-off race (and victory, of course) for Pitt's character, Sonny Hayes, a gun-for-hire hot-rodder who soon thereafter was invited to fill a Formula One seat.
Fun little factoid: In the movie, there's some Rolex signage, but the race in that opening sequence is called by its long-ago name — the 24 Hours of Daytona. Why? Probably because the long real-world partnership between Rolex and F1 ended after the 2024 season, with TAG Heuer now serving as official timekeeper of F1.
Soon after Sonny Hayes leaves Daytona's Victory Lane and hits the road in his custom Ford Econoline van, the opening credits finally roll and the stage shifts to the flashy playgrounds of Formula One.
'The rest of the movie was high-production, high-value, but selfishly, I think the first 10 minutes was arguably the best part of the movie,' Frank Kelleher says.
Of course he does, and he should. As president of Daytona International Speedway, he has a rooting interest.
'The gravity of the people, the resources, the equipment, the level of perfection they were seeking over the course of four to six weeks here in Daytona … for the first 10 minutes of the movie, it's really mind-blowing,' Kelleher says.
'But when you take a step further into that reality of the first 10 minutes of any film, that's where it's going to sink its claws into you, and you're going to get interested in it, or not. They had to stick the landing on those first 10 minutes, and I think they should be really proud of their finished product.'
Pettit saw the movie twice before it was released — first at Radio City Music Hall in NYC, then west of there at Watkins Glen, where an IMSA race weekend included a showing for the race teams and others.
'The first time I watched it, it was very difficult because I was looking at all of the detail,' Pettis says. 'The second time, I actually just got to sit there and watch it. I enjoyed it. There's a lot of drama, so if you suspend belief a little bit and just enjoy it, it's really good.'
In other words, overlook the fact racers don't climb into a Rolex 24 car before midnight and drive all the way through to sunrise — as Sonny Hayes did five minutes after he was awakened in his van.
'You can't get into the technical parts of it because it's a Hollywood production and that's OK,' Pettis says. 'But overall, from the fact that IMSA and the Rolex 24 and Daytona got to be the opening — basically the trailer to the F1 movie — was spectacular.
'They really separated us from F1 in the movie, and I appreciate why they did that. We had a lot of brand presence — Daytona, Rolex 24, WeatherTech Championship, Michelin. You want more, but on the other hand, given it was an F1 movie, I was very pleased with what we got out of it.'
— Email Ken Willis at
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: F1 the Movie: Daytona, Rolex 24 turn the early laps with Brad Pitt
