Why Hollywood's latest motorsport foray faces familiar stumbling blocks 

Hollywood history runs the risk of repeating itself when it comes to projecting motorsport on the silver screen. Thirty years after the first poorly received attempt to set Top Gun several thousand feet lower down, plans are afoot to give Formula 1 the blockbuster treatment this time.  

Apple TV earlier this year landed the rights to an F1 feature film starring Brad Pitt. The red carpet regular will play a seemingly over-the-hill ace who must come out of retirement and pair with a young hotshot to show the world how it’s done. If that plot sounds familiar, it’s only a couple of F-18 fighter jets short of 2022 smash hit Top Gun: Maverick. Oh, and for good measure, Maverick producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Joseph Kosinski will reprise those roles for this flick.  

Credits and storyline aside, we’ve been here before. British GP attendee Tom Cruise first donned a pair of Aviators to play Pete Mitchell in 1986. Four years later, he portrayed oval sensation Cole Trickle when the NASCAR-based Days of Thunder landed. The premise was Top Gun on Tarmac, but it failed to blow the box office away.

This time, perhaps Lewis Hamilton can help Apple TV steer clear of the danger zone. Lewis has been enlisted as a co-producer and will presumably have some scope to refine the script. In his words: “It’s about showing how great this sport really is to people that maybe have never watched it, but also making sure that we keep the real heritage and the true racing spirit in the movie.”

Hopefully, that means keep it realistic and avoid the tedious romantic diversions of Grand Prix (1966). As for similar projects, F1 was spared the 2001 goose Driven after Sylvester Stallone found the paddock to be too much of a closed-shop and instead butchered IndyCar.

The stiffest competition in terms of a fictional F1 flick therefore comes from Rush (2013). By the time principal filming wraps, more than a decade will have passed and yet the Hamilton-Pitt picture faces the same problems as Ron Howard’s retelling of the Niki Lauda vs James Hunt battle for the 1976 title.

Filming F1 cars in action with accuracy proved the hardest part to capture in Rush

Photo by: Imagine Entertainment /Kobal / Shutterstock

That is, F1 cars are enormously valuable so even Hollywood accountants wince at insurance costs. Plus, any damage and sourcing new parts has the potential to wreak havoc with filming schedules.

Then, to look good on the big screen, the regular F1 TV cameras just don’t cut it. But bulky movie equipment can’t nestle in a nose cone and nor can tracking cars keep up. The result, as per Rush, or Le Mans ’66, is that racing cars struggle when scripted. They come across slow, the scenes underwhelming.

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Hamilton reckons: “There’s lots of people within the sport who are being a part of this [film], helping educate those who are trying to create this movie. There’s talk already of how we’re going to capture some of the footage. It’s going to take us drivers to be involved in that.”

“It’s about showing how great this sport really is to people that maybe have never watched it, but also making sure that we keep the real heritage and the true racing spirit in the movie” Lewis Hamilton

That offers hope. But like Days of Thunder, the task is only made harder by the success of a Top Gun forerunner. Maverick is almost entirely reliant on practical effects to capture the stunning footage, helped by having the actors sitting in the backseat of the aircraft as the pilots plied their trade.

Two-seat F1 cars aside, Kosinski might have to get liberal with the use of CGI (much less immersive) or accept some scenes won’t be filmed flat-out. While the aim of exciting a new audience beyond even Drive to Survive is laudable then, let’s hope the execution can still take our breath away.

Brad Pitt isn't a stranger to F1, having promoted Oceans Twelve with the Jaguar F1 team alongside George Clooney, Christian Klien and Mark Webber

Photo by: Sutton Images