True to life or not, ‘F1’ movie taps into sport’s rich history of drama

The racing scenes in Brad Pitt's movie F1 are impressively authentic, but the filmmakers have also made much of how the sport's past is woven into the plot, with a hefty slice of Hollywood artistic licence.

"We drew from history. A little this, a little that, then we had Lewis Hamilton keep us straight," Pitt said at a New York premiere ahead of this week's general release in cinemas.

Apple's senior vice-president of services Eddy Cue, a lifelong Formula One fan and Ferrari board member, told reporters after a media screening "there's not a single event in here that hasn't happened in a real race".

That does not mean, of course, that such events could happen or that they served as anything more than inspiration.

The Apple Original Films blockbuster, with scenes shot during grand prix weekends, is a redemption story, with Pitt playing ageing driver Sonny Hayes on an unlikely comeback alongside a young hotshot at a struggling team.

Seven-times world champion Hamilton provided advice and is credited as a co-producer on a movie scripted for audiences unfamiliar with the sport.

Pitt's age, 61, has been called out as unrealistic for a driver in the modern era but as Hamilton, 40, said when filming started in 2023: "Brad looks like he’s ageing backwards."

The oldest F1 driver is Spaniard Fernando Alonso who will be 44 next month, but in the 1950s, when physical demands were less but dangers greater, Philippe Etancelin and Louis Chiron raced at 55. Luigi Fagioli was a winner at 53.

F1 comebacks also tend to follow short absences, one or two years at most, but it was not always the case.

Dutch driver Jan Lammers raced from 1979 to 1982 and was out for more than a decade,  when he won Le Mans and raced at Daytona, before returning in 1992. Italian Luca Badoer also had 10 years between races before a short-lived comeback in 2009.

Last to first

Drivers have gone from last to first in barely believable circumstances, made winning strategy calls and taken triumphs with unsung teams that would not normally be considered contenders.

The 2011 Canadian Grand Prix lasted more than four hours, featured six safety car deployments and was won by Jenson Button, who at one point was at the back of the field and had two collisions including one with McLaren teammate Hamilton.

Button made five pitstops plus a drive-through penalty, and picked up a puncture in a race halted for two hours.

Hayes' back story is of racing Ayrton Senna before suffering a crash so violent he was flung from the car while attached to his seat.

That is modelled on Northern Ireland's Martin Donnelly, who crashed at Jerez in practice for the 1990 Spanish Grand Prix and was left inert in the middle of the track.

He survived but there was no F1 comeback.

Drivers have escaped blazing crashes. Frenchman Romain Grosjean escaped after his car erupted in a fireball at the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix while Niki Lauda suffered serious burns in a 1976 Nuerburgring crash.

The Austrian returned to racing six weeks later.

There are nods to the Crashgate scandal, when Brazilian Nelson Piquet Jnr crashed deliberately at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix and triggered a safety car that helped teammate Alonso win.

A female technical director? Not yet, but women have run teams and work as strategists, race engineers and pitlane mechanics, though the movie is far from realistic in that regard.

For F1 fans of a certain age there is the 'Easter egg' of a glimpse of the Monza banking in homage to 1966 movie Grand Prix. F1 director Joseph Kosinski said the classic, and Steve McQueen's 1971 movie Le Mans, were his touchstones.

"Those movies are almost 60 years old but you can watch them and marvel at the cinematography and the feeling of being there," he said. "The whole practical nature of the film was inspired by the classics".