There have been many motorsport movies over the years, from Ron Howard’s Rush retelling the fierce rivalry between James Hunt and Nikki Lauda, to Steve McQueen’s Le Mans. Now, the pinnacle of motorsport is heading to the big screen with an official Formula 1 movie, simply titled F1, starring Brad Pitt.
Here’s everything you need to know about Brad Pitt’s F1 movie.
Latest news - First teaser trailer released
Last weekend not only brought us the most exciting race of 2024 so far but also our first look at the F1 trailer. Debuting just before the lights went out at Silverstone, the trailer has ignited the hype amongst F1 fans.
Introducing us to APX GP, the trailer shows Brad Pitt's Sonny Hayes being brought out of retirement to race alongside youngster Joshua Pierce, played by Damson Idris. Amongst real-world race footage, we see Hayes behind the wheel of the car blasting around Silverstone with Pierce just behind.
Featuring close-up footage of Pitt actually driving the bespoke F2 car designed for filming, the trailer does a great job of highlighting the high-octane world of Formula 1.
Check out the first trailer for F1 below:
Plot
F1 follows Sonny Hayes, a retired racing driver who returns to the sport to race and mentor his teammate, Joshua Pearce. Both drivers race for the fictional APXGP team. It’s not yet known if the official F1 teams will appear in the film. With the sport rarely represented in Hollywood, F1 is calling it a “landmark for the sport.”
Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton also helped produce the film to ensure the racing scenes are as authentic as possible. "We want everyone to love it and to really feel that we encapsulate what the essence of this sport is all about," said Hamilton.
There are parallels with Steve McQueen’s 1975 movie. McQueen wanted to make the most authentic racing movie ever by filming at the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race. Likewise, filming for F1 has taken place at race weekends, with Brad Pitt seen filming at the 2023 British Grand Prix. Pitt will return to Silverstone to resume filming at this year’s British Grand Prix.
Hamilton has teased that F1’s racing scenes will “blow people away,” capturing the speed of F1 racing better than any film before it thanks to advances in filming technology.
“Racing movies, I feel like it's very hard to capture them,” Hamilton said when appearing on Hot Ones. “You're following a truck that has a camera on the back, so it's hard to capture the speed. You can't have a truck filming us at 200 mph, so it's all kind of faked at a slower speed and they speed it up. But this is all real-time, real speed.”
“I think if you go back to like Steve McQueen, for example, back then they would have men laying on the front of the car with the camera, you know, like, or have a big camera on top of the helmet, where now we’ve got all this amazing new technology. So I feel like Joe [director Joseph Kosinski] honestly, I think he’s going to blow people away.”
Cast
F1 stars Brad Pitt, who plays the fictional racing driver. Best known for his roles in Snowfall, Outside the Wire, Black Mirror British actor Damson Idris will play his teammate, Joshua Pearce. F1 also stars Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem, Tobias Menzies, Sarah Niles, Kim Bodnia and Samson Kayo.
F1 will be directed by Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick) and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. Kosinski pioneered the use of multiple cockpit cameras in Top Gear Maverick to make the action sequences more visceral and immersive, and this is set to continue in F1.
"The cameras on F1, we put six cameras in the cockpit. And they were about this big, now they're this big, and they couldn't move, they were stationary. Now he's got them panning," Kosinski told Collider.
So you can be on Brad's face and pan to the car next to him. It's unbelievable what he's doing, and he's got 14 different camera positions on the car. We use four at a time because we don't want to slow the cars down."
Trailer
The first trailer for F1 was dropped just before the start of the 2024 British Grand Prix. With Silverstone featuring so heavily throughout filming, it's quite fitting that the home of Formula 1 also hosted the first look at the film.
This teaser trailer introduces the main characters of the film, as well as showing fans the speed, rivalries, and crashes they have to look forward to when the film is released.
Check out the first trailer for F1 below:
Release date
F1 is set to release in theatres and Imax worldwide on June 25, 2025, and in North America on June 27, 2025.
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