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1 year ago
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The actor opens up about driving real F1 cars, training like a pro, and filming on actual racetracks with the sport’s biggest stars.
Motorsport fans are about to get a high-octane dose of cinema with F1 — the upcoming highly-anticipated film that’s already being hailed as one of the most ambitious racing movies ever made.
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youtube.comDirected by Top Gun: Maverick’s Joseph Kosinski, F1 stars Brad Pitt as Sonny Hayes, a retired Formula 1 driver who returns to the sport to race for a fictional team called APXGP (pronounced “apex”).
ANDREJ ISAKOVIC / AFP via Getty Images
He’s joined by British actor Damson Idris, who plays rookie teammate Joshua Pearce. And while the team and characters may be fictional, almost everything else about the film is very, very real.
While kicking off the press tour in Mexico City, Pitt called the project “a dream come true”, revealing that he’d been trying to make a racing film for decades.
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“For me, it was just a no-brainer,” he said. “When Joe had this audacious plan to invent us in the racing season, to put us actually in the cars, it was just a dream come true.”
Kosinski’s vision was clear from the beginning: to make the most immersive and realistic racing film ever made. That meant no faking it — Pitt and Idris had to actually learn how to drive.
Ryan Pierse / Getty Images
“We started this training and we ended up getting to drive for basically two years in the making of this,” Pitt explained. “By the end of it, Damps and I — I say we were quite tasty… as drivers.”
That realism extended beyond just learning how to drive. Pitt and the production team — with major help from seven-time world champion and executive producer Lewis Hamilton — gained access to the inner workings of F1, even sitting in on drivers’ meetings to ensure authenticity.
Pitt said it was important to earn the respect of the sport and its athletes. “We had to go in and just try to earn their trust, let them know how much we respect the sport, how much we want to get it right, and how much we want to include them,” he shared.
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The cars themselves posed another challenge. Pitt described the Formula 1 steering wheel as “extreme”, filled with too many buttons to count.
LEXIE HARRISON-CRIPPS / AFP via Getty Images
“The idea of being in the car and dealing with these forces, G-forces, the physics of it all, is just something you cannot fake,” he said. “It is incredible what these guys can do.”
He added that the precision and speed required from F1 drivers was “staggering”, especially considering how tightly packed the grid is during races.
Formula 1 / Via giphy.com
“The idea that these guys can go around a four-mile track and all be within one second of each other — it’s awesome,” Pitt said. “It’s a religion for me. The downforce, the way these cars stick — there’s nothing I can compare it to.”
A huge part of the film’s authenticity comes from Hamilton’s input — both creatively and technically. “We would have meetings with him — some 12-hour meetings — as we developed the story and the script,” Pitt said.
Bryn Lennon - Formula 1 / Formula 1 via Getty Images
“A lot of him is in the film, certainly in the way the story ends. Even in post, he would tell us things like, ‘You’re in the wrong gear at Turn 6’, or, ‘Make sure you add the reverb when you go down the straight’. His knowledge is unfathomable.”
English (US)