Brad Pitt on learning to drive Formula 1 cars for F1 The Movie, “When you ﬁrst start, you’re making big jumps—gaining seconds. And as the months go by, you’re ﬁghting for quarters of seconds”

F1 The Movie has been met with a positive response from the audience and critics alike.

June 30, 2025 - 3:05 PM IST

From Apple Original Films and the filmmakers from Top Gun: Maverick comes the high-octane, action-packed feature film F1 The Movie, starring Brad Pitt and directed by Joseph Kosinski. The film is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, Kosinski, seven-time FORMULA 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton, Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner and Chad Oman.

Brad Pitt on learning to drive Formula 1 cars for F1 The Movie, “When you ﬁrst start, you’re making big jumps—gaining seconds. And as the months go by, you’re ﬁghting for quarters of seconds”

Dubbed “the greatest that never was,” Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) was FORMULA 1’s most promising phenom of the 1990s until an accident on the track nearly ended his career. Thirty years later, he’s a nomadic racer-for-hire when he’s approached by his former teammate Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), owner of a struggling FORMULA 1 team that is on the verge of collapse. Ruben convinces Sonny to come back to FORMULA 1 for one last shot at saving the team and being the best in the world. He’ll drive alongside Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), the team's hotshot rookie intent on setting his own pace.

But as the engines roar, Sonny’s past catches up with him and he finds that in FORMULA 1, your teammate is your fiercest competition—and the road to redemption is not something you can travel alone.

For the ﬁrst time, F1 The Movie puts actors in real race cars at top speeds against real drivers. Training Brad Pitt and Damson Idris to drive race cars at speeds up to 200 miles per hour required rigorous physical training as well as training in driving skill. Usually, this training is a course of study that begins at age six in go-karts and gradually makes drivers ﬁt and skilled enough to handle a Formula 1 car. Pitt and Idris would have to do it in a matter of weeks.

“When you ﬁrst start, you’re making big jumps—gaining seconds. And as the months go by, you’re ﬁghting for quarters of seconds,” says Pitt. “The ﬁrst month is just learning to trust the car—that the car will stick to the ground, the car will stop, even when you’re heading for a wall. The more you put into it, the better it sticks, the faster you can whip around a corner, even as every instinct in your body is screaming, ‘No! No! No! No! No! It’s gonna give way, it’s gonna give way, it’s gonna give way!’”

The drivers largely responsible for training Pitt and Idris were Luciano Bacheta, who also served as the lead sequence choreographer and a stunt driver, and Craig Dolby, also a stunt driver. “On top of driving, they also have to remember their lines and their acting performance, which racing drivers never have to do. They have to remember reactions and show emotional responses to story while driving, with their eyes only, through the visor.”

Bacheta and Dolby started Pitt and Idris in simulators, then six weeks of driving in lighter and less- powerful Formula 3 cars before moving to the Formula 2 machines. “Aim number one was to get them to be able to operate the car and drive it around safely. Once they were able to get around, we were able to start talking about going faster. We would talk about the rate of steering input, speed to the peak of braking, speed to full throttle, where do you lift and where do you not,” said Bacheta.

F1 The Movie also stars Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Tobias Menzies, Kim Bodnia, and Javier Bardem, and was shot during actual Grand Prix weekends as the team competed against the titans of the sport. Apple Original Films and Warner Bros. Pictures Present A Monolith Pictures / Jerry Bruckheimer / Plan B Entertainment / Dawn Apollo Films Production, A Joseph Kosinski Film, F1 The Movie, distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, released in cinemas and IMAX in India on June 27, 2025 in English, Hindi, Tamil & Telugu.

Also Read: F1: The Movie (English) Movie Review: F1 THE MOVIE is a gripping, captivating experience