Think of F1: The Movie as a spiritual companion to director Joseph Kosinksi’s last big-budget film, Top Gun: Maverick. Driver-for-hire Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) serves as the racing counterpart of Tom Cruise’s Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell: an aging man of action struck by personal tragedy, who never quite reached his full potential and now lives in an Airstream. Well, for Sonny, it’s a camper van. And in his case, Sonny Hayes isn’t a has-been. He’s a never-was.
Sonny gets a second chance when Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) materializes at his laundromat for a chat. As it turns out, the men are old friends, once both rising stars in Formula 1. Ruben now needs Sonny’s help. He owns the APXGP team, but there’s a problem: two-and-a-half seasons with zero points, and Ruben’s best driver left for another team. Somehow, it gets worse. APXGP’s car is a “shitbox,” and if he doesn’t turn it around in the nine remaining races, he loses the team.
Though it might not feel realistic for Ruben to approach an older racer like Sonny, their history (coupled with his desperation) lends the choice some plausibility. Everyone acknowledges that Sonny’s a Hail Mary for the team, technically Ruben’s ninth choice, and Sonny himself confesses that winning would be a miracle. In addition to borrowing from Maverick, there’s also a bit of Mission: Impossible here, too. It’s a bit of wish fulfillment, but there’s nothing wrong with that if one can suspend disbelief.
Die-hard F1 fans might find it difficult to do just that. For example, during one of the races, Sonny starts to crash into other cars, just enough to damage his own and trigger a safety car. This slows down the race—an intentional move intended to benefit his teammate, rookie racer Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris). It’s meant to show us that Sonny is a maverick, an “old-school rough-and-tumble no-bullshit cowboy” who doesn’t play by the rules. Realistically, though, that move would land him in major trouble with the FIA, possibly courting a lifetime ban in a controversy with echoes of CrashGate. (Pitt alludes to the influence of this specific scandal on F1’s Beyond the Grid podcast, suggesting that they looked to Fernando Alonso for inspiration: “We needed to get right to the edge of the rules to be competitive in any way, and that’s where Sonny starts out and is rather disliked because of it.”)
For Sonny’s backstory, the film borrows from real racing history, specifically Martin Donnelly’s near-fatal crash at Jerez in 1990. Donnelly hit a wall at 176 mph, causing his Lotus to disintegrate as he was ejected from the vehicle. That he survived was nothing short of a miracle. It effectively ended Donnelly’s Formula 1 career. When rookie Joshua watches a video of Sonny’s crash, it appears to be either painstakingly recreated footage or the actual archival material of Donnelly’s crash, albeit spliced with new elements and manipulated. (To change the color of his helmet, for example.) To racing fans who recognize the footage, the changes might feel a touch disrespectful, but not only is Donnelly thanked in the credits, Pitt also thanked him at the F1 premiere in London. Donnelly told the BBC that watching the accident in the film was, “such a surreal moment. It was something only I could appreciate.”
The racing sequences themselves aren’t quite on the level with some of the best racing movies ever made, but they offer undeniably fun spectacle, especially the finale at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. One aspect of the film: there are so many cuts that it feels miraculous when the film dwells on a single shot for more than a few seconds. For reasons that will remain unspecified to avoid spoiling too much, it may be a device that serves a narrative purpose. But in any case, the racing sequences rarely reach the transcendent heights of classics like Le Mans or Grand Prix, or a few newer entries into the canon, like Ford v Ferrari, which allow the camera to linger on an image. That time lets viewers savor the cars hurtling along the track. F1’s quick, choppy cutting breaks up that rhythm—and may break any spell the races might have otherwise cast on us.
Admittedly, these are all minor quibbles from a confirmed racing-movie nerd. On the flip side, rather than relying entirely on CG or filming against a green screen, director Kosinski and cinematographer Claudio Miranda make the races feel real, tactile, and visceral. (Though some CG is involved, this filming was as practical as it gets these days.) And the audio sounds great: Hans Zimmer’s propulsive score is galvanic, layered over these sequences and seamlessly blended with the sound design. The ribcage rattles. It should be seen—and felt—in IMAX.
Though it isn’t expressly made for them, the film doesn’t forget Formula 1 enthusiasts: There are several cameos from familiar faces like Fernando Alonso, Lando Norris, Zak Brown, Toto Wolff, Max Verstappen, and Lewis Hamilton. (Wolff and Hamilton were also producers on the film.) For nearly two years, the production followed Formula 1 around the world and shot at Grand Prix races, not just having the actors mingling with real crowds and real pit crews but placing them in race cars that they’d spent four or five months learning to drive. Pitt and Idris started with sports cars as their “training wheels,” moved on to open-wheel versions, then F3 cars before finally graduating to F2. (The film’s machines are Formula 2-spec cars dressed up to look like F1 cars.)
It should be clear at this point that F1 is not exactly a product of obsession made by—and for—diehard fans of Steve McQueen and Le Mans. Nor is it a documentary. It’s a summer blockbuster aiming to please the widest possible audience. But this film is absolutely a labor of love as well as a perfect entry point for new fans of the sport. So if you can let go of the nitpicks, F1 has plenty to offer as an enjoyable throwback.
This is popcorn entertainment for grown-ups, a sports movie that marries a comeback arc with a powerful underdog story. The screenplay’s a bit thin, but Kosinski’s electric filmmaking and the charisma of its cast are more than enough to fill in the gaps of its broadly sketched characters. Pitt possesses the old-school star power of actors (and gearheads of note) like James Garner, Steve McQueen, and Paul Newman, and Miranda’s magic camerawork maximizes his impact. (There’s one shot of Sonny lounging on a sofa that makes him appear to be the coolest man who ever lived.) But Bardem, Idris, Kim Bodnia’s team principal Kaspar Smolinski, and Kerry Condon’s team technical director Kate McKenna are equally magnetic screen presences. Reliably terrific character actor Shea Whigham even makes an all-too-brief appearance, and Sarah Miles is a delight as Joshua’s mother, Bernadette.
The dynamic between F1’s two new teammates feels familiar for good reason: It’s fun to watch. There are traces of Ayrton Senna’s and Alain Prost’s relationship and the Silver War (the rivalry between teammates Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg) in the interplay between Joshua and Sonny. The former is trying to make a name for himself, while the latter has spent years living as a lone wolf, accustomed to freedom from “encumbrances.” (He’s gone bankrupt after a stint with professional gambling, has one annulment and two divorces under his belt, etc.) When Sonny gets fed up with Joshua and says, “he’s cocky, he’s arrogant, he’s got a lot to learn,” he could be describing himself as a youth—and maybe now, too. These rivals are forced to remember that F1 is a team sport. And it’s a pleasure to see them try to figure it out together.
Like many of the great sports movies, the underlying story here is a celebration of the underdog. F1 takes it a step further and suggests that if you have to sell your soul to win, it’s maybe too high a cost. There’s honor in holding onto your humanity. When Sonny speaks with a character revealed as the film’s antagonist, Sonny tells him, “You’re a killer.” And he replies, “I’m a winner. Aren’t you?” But when “winning” compromises your integrity and comes at the expense of your teammates and your friends—the people you love—it’s better to be a loser. That’s a bit of Sonny wisdom: Sometimes when you lose, you win.
Hagerty previously did a deep dive on racing movies:
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