F1 movie: Brad Pitt’s Formula 1 thriller releases first trailer

As Lewis Hamilton was lining up on the front row of the grid for this year’s Formula 1 British Grand Prix at Silverstone, something else was happening in the world adjacent to motorsports.

The first trailer for F1, a Brad Pitt movie about the racing competition, had just been released.

The timing is obviously not a coincidence. As the F1 tour expanded to other parts of the world including the Middle East, Asia and the Americas, some of the legacy European circuits such as the British GP have only grown in prestige.

The Silverstone track, where racing legends such as Alain Prost, Jim Clark and Hamilton have dominated, still has a special cachet. Teasing the F1 movie just as the British GP was about to get underway was a master-stroke.

One year ago during the 2023 GP weekend, there was an unlikely driver taking turns around the circuit’s Luffield Corner and dashing down the Hangar Straight. It was Pitt. He was in a Formula 2 car built to look like an F1 car.

And it wasn’t just Hollywood magic. It was the real deal. With Hamilton one of the film’s producers through his production company, the F1 film worked with the Mercedes team to design the car.

F1 director Joseph Kosinski told Deadline, “It was (Mercedes’) Toto Wolff’s idea. They complain that racing movies aren’t fast enough because usually when they build these cars, they’re movie cars. You know, they look right, but they aren’t real race cars.

“At one of our first meetings, Toto said, ‘You should build this off a Formula 2 car, but make it look like a Formula 1 car’. So, it’s a Formula 2 chassis and engine.

“We worked closely with Mercedes and their design team and aerodynamics to develop a custom body that resembles the latest generation Formula 1 car.”

Pitt and co-star Damson Idris were shooting action scenes for the F1 movie in between practice and qualifying sessions. The production also shot a scene on the grid – and they had, according to Kosinski, about nine minutes to do it.

The trailer released today shows a glimpse of a grid scene. Standing next to Pitt and Idris, both in character, was real-life Red Bull driver Max Verstappen.

The movie is the story of a former racing driver named Sonny Hayes (Pitt). He had a bad crash in the 1990s and retired from the pinnacle of motorsports, driving for other competitions.

Sonny probably never thought he’d be on an F1 circuit again until his friend Ruben (Javier Bardem), the owner of the Apex team, asks him to mentor a young driver, Joshua (Idris).

F1 also stars Kerry Condon as a character named Kate who appears to be an engineer – the video features a scene in which Sonny asks Kate to build a car “for combat”. When she asks him how she’s meant to make that safe, he replies, “Who said anything about safe?”.

But with scenes of Pitt behind the wheel, it seems likely the story may develop into a comeback narrative in which the character does more than just mentoring.

If you’re thinking that sounds a lot like the broad strokes of Top Gun: Maverick, you wouldn’t be wrong. Kosinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer both worked on the Tom Cruise sequel.

Kosinski told Deadline the cars used in the film have 15 camera mounts in them, designed with Mercedes and Sony, and it’s a step up from what the team used in Top Gun: Maverick – they’re smaller and can pan and focus, which the cameras inside the Top Gun jets couldn’t do.

The crew were back at Silverstone this weekend, shooting more footage for the not-yet-finished film, which was interrupted last year by the actors’ strike. But in the downtime, Kosinski was busy capturing second unit and stunt footage at other 2023 F1 races.

The film will also feature the Belgian Spa circuit, Italy’s Monza track, the Netherlands’ Zandfoort as well as the GPs in Japan, Las Vegas, Abu Dhabi and Mexico City.

Formula 1 has been a massive international sport for decades but the Americans have only started to really follow it after the success of Netflix docuseries Drive to Survive, which released its sixth season earlier this year.

The studios behind F1 (Apple and Warner Bros) are banking that the sport’s increased appeal will pay off its huge investment. The movie has a reported $US300 million budget but Kosinski and Bruckheimer disputed the figure and said it was lower in part due to location rebates.

The film is due for release in cinemas including IMAX in June 2025 before its streaming release on Apple TV+.