With Formula One hosting Brad Pitt and a full-scale film production at the British Grand Prix this weekend making a movie about the sport with Lewis Hamilton as a producer, the two different worlds have adapted remarkably well to make the project come together at Silverstone. The film about Formula One, as yet unnamed, opened filming this weekend in front of the fans with the British Grand Prix as both set and backdrop.
The fictional 11th team, APX, has its own garage and pitwall stand for drivers Sonny Hayes, Pitt’s character, and Joshua Pearce, played by British actor Damson Idris. They are running an F2 car converted to look like an F1 car for filming between the usual sessions and races that make up the weekend.
Hamilton has been involved from the off and on Friday the Mercedes team principal, Toto Wolff, explained how the team too had been closely involved in the process. “I spoke to the director a few weeks ago expecting him to say he was in Hollywood,” said Wolff. “He said: ‘I am in my apartment in Brackley’, so it’s not all great being a movie director …”
“We were involved pretty early when they had the first discussions. We sent Brad to a driving school in France, going through the formula cars from Formula 4 all the way up and that was important.”
The picture is being made by Apple Original Films, directed by Joseph Kosinski, who made Top Gun: Maverick, and is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, a long-time successful Hollywood producer. There has been a strong commitment to making the film as accurate and believable as possible, as Wolff explained.
“We tried to be helpful with the narrative,” he said. “Lewis is a producer and he wanted to make sure that when the movie comes out it is as realistic as possible. It’s a very, very good narrative and then there is the effort they put in.
“We helped them to use an F2 car and build the bodywork around it so it looks like an F1 car. The garage and the pitwall, all of that, we tried to be helpful and gave them the design so they could be as realistic as possible. When you go into the garage the whole set-up behind is really unbelievable.”
The film has the full support of F1, which sees it as another way to further draw in a new audience that have come to the sport in recent years, especially with the popularity of the Drive To Survive series.
Pitt, who is 59 and who has been advised by Hamilton, will play a veteran driver returning to F1 after some time out of the sport. He will drive the car this weekend and the film crew will also shoot the race itself using 20 cameras, the two separate sets of footage will then be merged putting Pitt and his fictional team apparently in the heart of the action.
In the genuine article during F1 practice Max Verstappen was the star of the show again. He led first practice for Red Bull, almost half a second up on his teammate Sergio Pérez.
In the afternoon session Verstappen was once more on top. He was in fine form at the old airfield but was far from having it all his own way, pushed very hard by last year’s winner, Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, who was just two-hundredths of a second behind.
Williams’ Alex Albon also enjoyed a productive day, third in both sessions. Mercedes struggled, however, George Russell was 12th and Lewis Hamilton 15th in free practice two.
Verstappen goes into the tenth round of the season with a commanding lead in the world championship, 81 points clear of Pérez and looking for his sixth consecutive win in his 150th start for Red Bull. His team remain unbeaten in all nine meetings thus far this season.
