More Formula Hollywood than Formula 1

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More than Formula 1 , it's Formula Hollywood. Brad Pitt's film, coming out on June 25 in Italy, has extraordinary racing images, beautiful photography, Oscar-worthy sound effects, actors who get into character well and even act while actually driving at over 300 miles an hour, but the story... The story doesn't really hold up and it's surprising how Hamilton endorsed it, becoming one of the producers with his Dawn Apollo Films. On the other hand, Hollywood has brought us imaginative stories about baseball, golf, horse racing and every kind of sport. Over there, everything turns into a fairy tale like Pretty Woman, a film that, after more than 30 years, continues to attract audiences with every TV appearance. In short, it's not Drive to Survive, but it's not a film about Formula 1 either. It's the classic Hollywood product with Formula 1 in the background with all its protagonists, including Roscoe, Lewis' bulldog. Joseph Kosinski, the director of “Top Gun: Maverick,” said he was inspired by the Netflix series he watched during Covid: “ I really liked how the first season of the show focused on the bottom positions, the underdogs, rather than Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull, the teams that you see at the front of the pack,” he said. “I thought there was an interesting story to tell about an underdog team trying, not to win the championship, but just to win a race against these titans of the sport .”

The team is Apx Gp by Ruben Cervantes (played by Javier Bardem), a former driver who made his fortune and built his team with a lot of gender awareness: a black driver, a female technical director, a female mechanic in charge of changing tires, a team principal who is a former mechanic for Ferrari, five-time world champion, the young man who only thinks about social media, the more down-to-earth old man, the bad guy who wants to screw everyone over and gets screwed over. The Apx Gp single-seaters, elegant even if a little too Duracell-battery powered (in reality they are Formula 2 single-seaters adapted thanks to Mercedes), are not competitive and Bardem changes a driver per race or so. Until he gets the brilliant idea of ​​pairing the young black promise (Joshua Pearce played by Damson Idris) with an old teammate of his, now over fifty, who disappeared from Formula 1 after a terrible accident in the 1990s (the images here are those of Donnelly's scary crash in Jerez in 1990). And here Brad Pitt comes into play, playing Sonny Hayes, a driver who travels the world jumping from the 24 of Daytona to the Bay 1000 without problems. He has just won the 24 of Daytona, leaving the cup and the legendary Rolex to the team (“I already have one at home”), when he receives an offer from his old friend: “Help me save the team: I have to win a race before the end of the season to avoid them taking it away from me”. Brad Pitt really drove, he says he had a lot of fun after going to a lesson with Hamilton who gave him a real scare on the first lap. There were some problems with the insurance, but in the end Brad Pitt really drove on the track. “ The most interesting thing about Brad is that deep down he is already a bit of a driver”, said Hamilton who acted as a super consultant for the film, indicating where to do certain overtaking scenes, how to make the images on the track credible. But it is precisely reading Lewis' contribution that doubts arise because the film seems to have been written and scripted by Flavio Briatore, the one from Singapore Gate so to speak, and not by a seven-time world champion who has always made fairness his mantra. After butting heads with his young teammate, Brad Pitt decides to help him in his own way. He causes accidents to bring out the Safety Car (or even show the red flag) at the right time, he waits to come out of the pits after the tire change when the race leader is arriving to hinder him, he stays stuck in the pits until the team puts on the tires he wants . All things that the Briatore of Singapore could have thought up, not the Lewis Hamilton we know. Of course, the team is penalized, relegated on the grid, and is also the victim of internal espionage that leads the FIA ​​to prohibit it from going on the track with the magical aerodynamic innovations that have transformed single-seaters into fighter jets, slow on the straights, but very fast on the curves, exactly as Brad Pitt requested in front of the wind tunnel. And here too, to see during a season a team that could be Sauber or Haas, invent a new fund and suddenly become a winning team, is quite absurd. But this is Hollywood, the land of dreams.

The images on the track are beautiful anyway. They were shot on 14 circuits of the World Championship on the same race weekends with the Apex drivers who mixed with the real ones taking advantage of the few minutes at their disposal to make everything very realistic. Three years of work, eighteen months of editing, over 200 million dollars to produce a film of over 2h30' with a predictable ending even if there is no lack of twists. The intention was to be a film for Formula 1 fans and neophytes, a product capable of increasing the popularity of a sport that is conquering more and more young people. The impression is that the big fans, while applauding the images, may turn up their noses at how improbable the story is. But the film has it all, the generational conflict with the young man who travels with his mother but only thinks about making money and the old man still in love with his sport, the sporting challenge on the track and also a romantic night between the pilot and his technical director well played by Kerry Condon who after trying to bring peace between his pilots ends up in bed with Brad Pitt. This is Hollywood.