In the new “F1” movie, the race cars reach real-life speeds of 180 mph. But who’s behind the wheel?
The film’s producer, Oscar-winning producer Jerry Bruckheimer, tells TODAY.com “F1” stars Brad Pitt and Damson Idris were authentically racing.
“Damson Idris, who’s a rising young star, had to drive in these cars and train for three months, just like Brad (Pitt) did,” Bruckheimer says. “But the brutality of what you go through in these cars that are going 180 miles an hour — they have to break down to 50. They’re taking 5 Gs in the corners. It is brutal.”
When recalling the experience of racing at such high speeds, Idris explains to TODAY.com the difficulty of the “intricate turnings and just the Gs that you’re hitting, and just the way the car sticks as you’re turning.”
“I can’t explain it. You have to be in it to feel it, you know? But the brilliance of this movie is, through watching it, you feel like you’re in a car,” he says of the action flick, which premiered June 27 in IMAX.
Driving on Real-Life Racetracks During Real-Life Races
As part of maintaining the authenticity of Formula One in the film, shooting occurred on actual racetracks around the world — sometimes during real-time F1 races.
Bruckheimer explains that F1 races are held at 22 different tracks globally, and the movie shot at nine of them since the plot follows the drivers during the last nine races of the season.
In order to shoot during the competitions, Bruckheimer says the film crew “had track time at every race.”
“In other words, we get three (to) five minutes in between qualifying or in between practice,” he shares.
“What was exciting for our actors is, first of all, they’re driving these cars at high speeds in front of 140,000 people and 10 million people, 100 million people,” Bruckheimer continues, adding that the actors were required to drive and break at high speeds while “remembering your lines at the same time.”
Bruckheimer compares the takes during real races to “live theater.”
Kerry Condon, who plays Kate McKenna in the movie, tells TODAY.com she was ready for the fast-paced filming when she agreed to take on the role.
“Joe (Kosinski) told me, when I got the job, ‘There’s going to be a live aspect, so you’re not going to get a lot of takes. And also, with that, there’s not going to be makeup checks all the time. Once you’re on that pit wall, we’re done. There’s no bathroom breaks,’” she recalls, adding, “So I loved that, personally.”
As for Idris, who plays F1 driver Joshua Pearce in the movie, he jokes about the high-stakes takes, “I just said, ‘If anything goes wrong, I’m going to pretend it’s Brad that’s driving.’”
With a slightly more serious tone, he then describes the filming process as “exhilarating” while crediting the “F1” creative team for making them feel “overprepared” going into the quick takes.
“Of course, naturally, things could go wrong. We had one of the most famous human beings on the planet or universe in our movie,” Idris says, referring to Pitt. “So we’d be doing scenes on the track and people (were) running up with selfies. So that was always an added pressure.”
“But that pressure, we reveled in it,” he adds.
Javier Bardem, who plays Ruben Cervantes, points out Idris and Pitt likely felt more pressure filming during the live races in front of hundreds of thousands of people. But he says the crew’s “work” wasn’t lost on him.
“Being part of the scenes with the driver, and being part of what it means to be a team, and the whole structure of what it takes to put those drivers on the track, it’s so much work,” Bardem tells TODAY.com. “And it’s very admirable to see the effort that it takes for so many people to make that car ready to go that speed.”
