The racing sequences in Brad Pitt’s new Formula One film deliver striking realism, but the story leans heavily on Hollywood flair, blending motorsport history with creative license.
“We just drew from history – a little of this, a little of that – and had Lewis Hamilton keep us on track,” Pitt said at the film’s New York premiere ahead of its global release.
Apple’s senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue – a longtime Formula One enthusiast and Ferrari board member – added after a media screening, “There’s not a single event in the film that hasn’t happened in a real race.”
That doesn’t mean those moments could unfold today – or that they serve as anything more than dramatic inspiration.
The Apple Original Films blockbuster, with scenes shot during Grand Prix weekends, is a redemption story, with Pitt playing aging driver Sonny Hayes on an unlikely comeback alongside a young hotshot at a struggling team.
Seven-time world champion Hamilton provided advice and is credited as a co-producer on a movie scripted for audiences unfamiliar with the sport.
Pitt's age – 61 in real life – has been called out as unrealistic for a modern driver. But as Hamilton, 40, said when filming started in 2023: “Brad looks like he’s aging backward.”
The oldest current F1 driver is Spaniard Fernando Alonso, who will turn 44 next month. But in the 1950s, when physical demands were lower but dangers greater, Philippe Etancelin and Louis Chiron raced at 55. Luigi Fagioli won at 53.
F1 comebacks today tend to follow short absences – one or two years at most – but that wasn’t always the case.
Dutch driver Jan Lammers raced from 1979 to 1982, then spent more than a decade away, during which he won Le Mans and raced at Daytona, before returning in 1992. Italian Luca Badoer also had a 10-year gap between starts before a short-lived comeback in 2009.
Drivers have gone from last to first in barely believable circumstances, made bold strategy calls, and won with underdog teams rarely seen as contenders.
The 2011 Canadian Grand Prix lasted more than four hours, featured six safety car deployments, and was won by Jenson Button, who at one point was at the back of the field and had two collisions, including one with McLaren teammate Hamilton.
Button made five pit stops, plus a drive-through penalty, and picked up a puncture in a race halted for two hours.
Hayes’ backstory includes racing Ayrton Senna before a crash so violent he was flung from the car still strapped to his seat, modeled on Northern Ireland’s Martin Donnelly, who crashed at Jerez during practice for the 1990 Spanish Grand Prix and was left motionless on the track.
He survived, miraculously, but never returned to F1.
Drivers have escaped blazing crashes – Frenchman Romain Grosjean after his car erupted in a fireball at the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix, and Niki Lauda, who suffered serious burns in a 1976 Nurburgring crash.
Lauda returned to racing just six weeks later.
There are nods to the “Crashgate” scandal, when Brazilian Nelson Piquet Jr. crashed deliberately at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, triggering a safety car that helped teammate Alonso win.
A female technical director? Not yet. But women have run teams and serve as strategists, race engineers and pit lane mechanics – although the movie takes considerable creative liberties on that front.
For longtime fans, there’s an Easter egg: a glimpse of the Monza banking in homage to the 1966 film Grand Prix. F1 director Joseph Kosinski said that classic, along with Steve McQueen’s 1971 film Le Mans, served as inspiration.
“Those movies are now almost 60 years old, but you can still watch them and marvel at the cinematography and the feeling of being there,” he said.
“The whole practical nature of this film was inspired by those classics.”
