F1 review – speed is king, sub­tle­ty is yellow-flagged

There’s no point in deny­ing it. No use pre­tend­ing oth­er­wise. By any rea­son­able met­ric or mea­sure, it remains a sim­ple and immutable truth: men are class. And yes, dudes do, in fact, rock.

This is the most log­i­cal and self-evi­dent con­clu­sion to draw from F1: The Movie, a tur­bo-charged Dad Movie par excel­lence in which Brad Pitt’s star in an unrea­son­ably priced car proves that some­times the old ways are the best. Pitt plays Son­ny Hayes, a one­time For­mu­la One prodi­gy turned world-weary rent-a-wheel­man, who is lured out of retire­ment for one last ride by his old friend and for­mer team­mate Ruben Cer­vantes (Javier Bar­dem), now the own­er of the strug­gling APXGP team.

Hayes is brought in to men­tor the team’s num­ber-one dri­ver, Joshua Pearce (Dam­son Idris), a promis­ing rook­ie whose F1 career is in dan­ger of stalling before it has real­ly begun. But it’s not long before Hayes starts assert­ing his alpha male­ness all over the team garage, charm­ing the pants (lit­er­al­ly, in one case) off every­one from the mechan­ics to the press offi­cer to the most influ­en­tial mem­ber of the board. Every­one, that is, except Pearce, whose eager­ness to best his new de fac­to rival will have dis­as­trous con­se­quences – not just for him, but for the entire team.

Direc­tor Joseph Kosin­s­ki and screen­writer Ehren Kruger, who pre­vi­ous­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed on 2022’s Top Gun: Mav­er­ick, are reunit­ed here to sim­i­lar­ly earnest, chest-thump­ing effect. Aside from a few brief glimpses into Pearce’s home life and a some­what laboured roman­tic sub­plot between Hayes and Ker­ry Condon’s Kate McKen­na (hailed as F1’s first female tech­ni­cal direc­tor), their script most­ly cuts to the chase – which is handy for a film whose run­time exceeds the aver­age length of an F1 race. Kosin­s­ki and Kruger know exact­ly what their audi­ence wants: dar­ing over­takes, late break­ing, sparks fly­ing, spec­tac­u­lar crash­es – and lots of it.

Indeed, the mid­dle por­tion of the film plays out like an extend­ed rac­ing mon­tage, the action furi­ous­ly jump­ing from cir­cuit to cir­cuit – Spa, Mon­za, Las Vegas, Suzu­ka – as Hayes and Pearce begin steadi­ly work­ing their way up the grid. They are aid­ed by a chas­sis upgrade, devel­oped by McKen­na and designed to let them dri­ve through dirty air, and some good old-fash­ioned race­craft. The reck­less tac­tics and brazen skull­dug­gery employed by Hayes are car­ried off with a know­ing wink and a toothy grin, but are also plain­ly ludi­crous – to the extent you may end up park­ing your sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief. Still, when the results are this thrilling, it seems churl­ish to nit­pick about such fan­ci­ful nar­ra­tive manoeuvres.

Made with the full back­ing of the sport’s omnipo­tent gov­ern­ing body, the FIA, many key scenes were filmed dur­ing the 2023 and 2024 British Grand Prix events, with Pitt and Idris dri­ving adapt­ed For­mu­la Two cars in between actu­al prac­tice ses­sions. The footage cap­tured over those week­ends – par­tic­u­lar­ly the in-car, first-per­son POV shots – is aston­ish­ing. Unless you’ve dri­ven in F1 pro­fes­sion­al­ly, this is as close as you’re ever like­ly to get to the feel­ing of hit­ting 200 mph down Silverstone’s icon­ic Hangar Straight.

Yet the FIA’s involve­ment also means that, even more than the strong smell of Brut, burnt rub­ber and testos­terone, the film has the unmis­tak­able whiff of an expen­sive, sani­tised PR exer­cise. Sev­er­al real-life big names from the For­mu­la One pad­dock – includ­ing reign­ing World Cham­pi­on Max Ver­stap­pen, sev­en-time champ Lewis Hamil­ton (who also has a pro­duc­er cred­it on the film) and team prin­ci­pals such as Mer­cedes’ Toto Wolff and Ferrari’s Fred Vasseur – appear in back­ground cameo roles as them­selves. Not to men­tion a num­ber of offi­cials and even a few state dignitaries.

For added authen­tic­i­ty, the GP scenes are accom­pa­nied by broad­cast­ing stal­warts David Croft and Mar­tin Brun­dle, whose inces­sant expo­si­tion­al com­men­tary is like­ly to grate on sea­soned fans, but should help casu­al view­ers grasp the fin­er details of what is an extreme­ly tech­ni­cal sport. What is miss­ing – albeit under­stand­ably – is any attempt to grap­ple with the eth­i­cal con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing For­mu­la One, from accu­sa­tions of sports­wash­ing to con­cerns about its envi­ron­men­tal impact, work­place mis­con­duct, and per­son­al alle­ga­tions made against var­i­ous senior fig­ures with­in the sport and its par­ent organisation.

All top­ics wor­thy of wider dis­cus­sion, but per­haps not in a film like this – where speed is king and sub­tle­ty is yel­low-flagged; where cold real­i­ty fin­ish­es a dis­tant sec­ond to the white-hot fan­ta­sy of a glob­al prod­uct that, as evi­denced by Netflix’s wild­ly pop­u­lar docu­d­ra­ma Dri­ve to Sur­vive, is engi­neered to con­tin­u­ous­ly fuel its own hype machine. If you’re look­ing for a seri­ous win­dow into the high-stakes, cut­throat world of For­mu­la One, you cer­tain­ly won’t find it here. So stick on that Fleet­wood Mac CD, grab those vin­tage Dun­hill avi­a­tors, and strap your­self in. As the late, great Mur­ray Walk­er used to say – go, go, go, go!

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