Revealed: What Lewis Hamilton really thought of Brad Pitt’s driving
“They’re made for shooting movies, but they are fundamentally race cars.”
Brad Pitt famously drove on-track during last year’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone, to shoot scenes for the ‘F1’ movie.
The Hollywood superstar and the film crew were back, last weekend, at Silverstone as filming continued.
The reaction of Lewis Hamilton - one of the movie’s executive producers - to Pitt’s driving ability has now been shared.
“We trained Brad for almost three months — Brad and Damson Idris — in various cars,” producer Jerry Bruckheimer told Deadline.
“They started in Formula 3 and then moved up to Formula 2.
“Lewis says they’re really terrific; they’re just natural, natural athletes.
“He was really impressed with them, with their driving.”
The car that Pitt drove last year at Silverstone, in between real-life F1 sessions and in front of the live crowd, was an F2 car modified to look like an F1 car.
“We worked with Mercedes and this was actually Toto Wolff’s idea,” director Joseph Kosinski said.
“They all complain that racing movies aren’t fast enough because usually when they build these cars, they’re movie cars. You know, they look right, but they aren’t real race cars.
“At one of our first meetings, Toto said: ‘You should build this off a Formula 2 car, but make it look like a Formula 1 car,’ so it’s a Formula 2 chassis and engine.
“We worked closely with Mercedes and their design team and aerodynamicists to develop a custom body that resembles the latest generation Formula 1 car.
“They’re built specifically for this movie. They also have 15 camera mounts built into them, including the recorders and the batteries and the transmitters.
“They’re made for shooting movies, but they are fundamentally race cars.”
The uniqueness of the film - which will be called ‘F1’ - is that scenes were shot at real-life grands prix.
“We’ve got Brad and Damson Idris actually driving the cars, which is pretty spectacular in itself, but to do that in front of a live audience and at the speeds they’re doing it and figuring out a way to capture it… The logistics of it are unlike anything I’ve done before,” Kosinski said.
“We’re shooting at the actual grands prix, there are certain aspects of this film where we’re working in very, very tight windows, shooting on the track, between practice and qualifying sessions, in front of hundreds of thousands of people.”
The storyline of the movie is that Sonny Hayes (played by Pitt) is a veteran racing driver lured back for one last shot at glory.
The 2023 British Grand Prix paddock was fitted with a garage of an 11th team - the fictional APXGP.
Last weekend, during real-life post-race interviews for Lando Norris and Sergio Perez, fans spotted Pitt acting in the background, shooting his own ‘post-race interview’.
The movie will feature all of the current F1 drivers, and has been made in partnership with Formula 1.
‘F1’ will be released in June 2025.
James was a sports journalist at Sky Sports for a decade covering everything from American sports, to football, to F1.
