Brad Pitt races at 180 m.p.h. in F1 movie: 'He's a naturally gifted driver'

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Even if you don’t know a single thing about Formula One racing, filmmaker Joseph Kosinski is convinced movie fans will have no problem going along for the ride in the upcoming Brad Pitt action drama.

Due out in theatres and IMAX on June 27, F1 casts Pitt, 61, as Sonny Hayes, a washed-up former Formula  One racer who is lured back to the track when his friend and team owner (Javier Bardem) asks him to get behind the wheel to help mentor rookie driver Joshua Pearce (Snowfall’s Damson Idris) on the fictional APXGP squad. 

Kosinski, who took moviegoers into a fighter jet’s cockpit in Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick, says the classic underdog story from Apple films will be accessible to everyone.

“This is a movie about friendship, teamwork, sacrifice and redemption,” Kosinski said during a media event to plug the latest trailer for the film. “The story is universal. It just happens to be set in this incredibly exciting world of Formula One. If you are a Formula One fan, I think you’re going to like this movie. But if you don’t know anything about Formula One, I think you’re going to like this movie, and you might come out wanting to watch some races or maybe even go to a race. So you don’t need to know anything going in. We’ll teach you everything you need to enjoy this story.”

“Some people look at Sonny Hayes, they see a guy who lives in a van. A gambling junkie who missed his shot. The best that never was,” Bardem’s Ruben says in a voiceover from the teaser. “But I see possibility.”

Made in collaboration with well-known names from the Formula One community, F1 boasts Pitt, Jerry Bruckheimer and seven-time F1 champ Lewis Hamilton among its producers.

Speaking to journalists, Hamilton said F1 “will be the most authentic racing film you will ever experience in a cinema.”

Filming for F1 took place at actual Formula One races like Silverstone — home of the British Grand Prix — and at the Hungaroring near Budapest; as well as Spa Francorchamps in Belgium; Japan’s Suzuka track; the Vegas strip and Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina circuit.

Cameras would roll between practice and qualifying runs. “The crowd you’re seeing was really there in the stands. I don’t think the crowd realized that Brad Pitt was in the car that was in front of them,” Kosinski quipped.

Just as Cruise and his castmates needed to learn how to pilot planes to perform some of the high-flying stunts in Maverick, Pitt and Idris had to become proficient drivers to film F1’s racing scenes, which find them both going at speeds of over 180 m.p.h.

“It was an adrenaline rush every weekend, but what we captured is something you can’t fake,” the filmmaker said.

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“Brad and Damson are both driving in this film, and in order to get them into these race cars, it required literally months of training,” Kosinski added. “Lewis was really interested in seeing if Brad would know how to drive right. Because if Brad can’t drive, this whole film wasn’t going to work.”

Hamilton noticed Pitt had a “natural ability” behind the wheel.

“I don’t know where he got that or if he was born with it,” Kosinski explained. “But he’s just a very talented, naturally gifted driver, which for Lewis, after that first meeting, gave him a lot of confidence that we might have a shot at pulling this off.”

Speaking with Sky News at last summer’s British Grand Prix, Pitt said his character “craps out and disappears” after suffering an accident in the 1990s. He heads back to the track to mentor Idris’ driver as “kind of a Hail Mary, and hijinks ensue.”

“You’ve never seen just the G-forces like this,” the Oscar winner teased of the high-speed racing scenes. “It’s really, really exciting.”

Kosinski said Pitt had a fearlessness when he was in the driver’s seat.

“He just had that natural feel for the car and what we’re doing on this film is dangerous. So yeah, you have to be fearless … that’s something that you just can’t fake, I think. I hope the audience feels that when they watch the movie,” he said.

Kosinski told reporters he was drawn into the world of F1 after getting hooked on watching Netflix’s Drive to Survive series during the COVID pandemic.

“I found that it’s an incredibly unique sport in that your teammate is also, in many ways, your greatest competition. And for me, that makes for a great drama,” he said. “I also loved how the first season of the show focused on the last-place teams, the underdogs rather than the Ferrari, the Mercedes, the Red Bull, the teams that you see at the front of the pack. And I thought that there was an interesting story to be told about an underdog team trying — not to win the championship — but just trying to win one race against these titans of the sport.”

Restricted by what he could show during filming on Maverick, Kosinski was able to collaborate on a brand-new camera with Sony to capture scenes inside the cars.

“You can’t put 60 pounds of gear onto a race car and expect it’s going to perform the same way. So we took those Top Gun cameras and we worked closely with Sony, sizing them down to something about a quarter of the size,” he said.

His friendship with Hamilton led to a meeting with Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, who helped convince Kosinski to go a step further and use real cars during shooting to tap into the real-life high-speed thrills of an F1 race.

“We actually bought six F2 cars, real F2 race cars and worked with Mercedes AMG, the Formula One team and their engineers to build real race cars that could carry our camera equipment — recorders and transmitters for making this film,” Kosinski said. “So every time you see Brad or Damson driving in this movie, they’re driving on their own in one of these real race cars on a real F1 track … When you see Brad driving, that’s not acting. He’s really concentrating on keeping that car on the track and out of the wall during all those scenes.”

F1 opens in theatres and IMAX on June 27.

mdaniell@postmedia.com