Brad Pitt "didn't sleep for 36 hours" after driving a 2023 McLaren F1 car

It’s rare that one of the year’s biggest films falls squarely into Top Gear’s wheel-house. But make no mistake, F1: The Movie is big – an ultra widescreen, IMAX-grade entertainment as precision-tooled and gleaming a star vehicle as the Ferrari SF-25 driven by Lewis Hamilton.

He, of course, is one of the film’s executive producers, an advisor and guarantor of authenticity, having first been approached by the director, Joe Kosinski, when Lewis’s proposed appearance in his previous film, Top Gun: Maverick, was scuppered by the day job. Kosinski, a Porsche 911 obsessive and motorsport fan, became immersed in F1 via Netflix hit Drive To Survive, when the world was becalmed during Covid. He figured an F1 film would be a fun follow-up to the billion dollar-grossing Top Gun sequel.

Legendary film producer Jerry Bruckheimer, the man behind Days of Thunder, Armageddon, and Pirates of the Caribbean amongst countless other films and television programmes (and computer games, he knows which way the world is turning), is also a racing fan. Together, they pitched to F1’s owners, Liberty Media, led by the whip-smart and commercially savvy former Ferrari team principal, Stefano Domenicali. Warner Bros is distributing the film. Finally, no less a player than Apple Studios has bankrolled the project to the tune of a rumoured $300m (a figure Bruckheimer denies but it’s in that ball-park), enhancing the tech giant’s reputation for prestige television and cinema.

You could call it a no-brainer, but the stakes are sky high. Not to mention the fact that the world of motor racing hasn’t always been well-served by cinema. What could possibly go wrong, apart from everything?

These are the bones of the deal: factor in Brad Pitt, playing a world-weary but still fast former F1 prodigy urged back into top-flight motor racing, hot new British acting talent Damson Idris as his team-mate, the brilliant Javier Bardem as the beleaguered owner of fictional F1 team Apex GP, and Academy Award nominee Kerry Condon as the squad’s technical director, and all the bases are covered.

As Kosinski tells TopGear.com, he had to wait for the technology to arrive that would enable him to tell the story he wanted to tell, the way he knew it needed to be told. With that, plus the buy-in from Formula One and the teams, he could advance an idea that was first deployed by John Frankenheimer in 1966’s classic Grand Prix, which is to say, immerse the audience fully in the racing.

As we know, the production inserted itself into the 2023 F1 season, shooting extensively at Silverstone, Hungary, Monza and Abu Dhabi. This is a piece of movie-making sleight of hand without parallel in cinematic history. And while a Hollywood narrative unfolds in parallel – it’s a bit ‘on-the-nose’ at times, necessarily so – it’s worth bearing in mind what you’re actually watching. Two actors, one of whom is arguably the most famous film star in the world, driving for real in pretty serious racing cars (specially converted F2 cars, in fact). The recent Hollywood writer’s strike didn’t have many upsides, but Pitt confirmed to TG that it meant more wheel time for him and his co-star as they prepped for the movie. More, but still not enough, it turns out.

We caught up with him, as well as Idris, Kosinski, Bruckheimer and Condon, ahead of the film’s release. Have a watch below, and then get yourself to the nearest IMAX cinema this weekend…