The roar of the engines isn't just a sound effect anymore. If Damson Idris's unforgettable Met Gala 2025 entrance – showing up in a full F1 race suit, helmet, and even a race car – left you wondering about his next big screen project, you're not alone. It was a tantalizing tease, a powerful signal that Idris, alongside none other than Brad Pitt, is about to immerse us in the visceral, heart-pounding world of Formula 1 like never before.
Imagine standing on the pit wall of Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina Circuit. There’s a primal roar, a sound atavistic and intense, building in the distance. We snap our heads, holding our collective breath, not for a T-Rex, but for Brad Pitt’s F1 car to come screaming down the start-finish straight. And then, whaaaa! There it is, sliding around the track’s final turn, rocketing by with the speed and power of a fighter jet, belching flames from its tail as it thunders through turn one and vanishes. Our hair is blown back. "I will never get sick of that sound," someone breathes.
For those wondering, scratching their heads, and leaning in closer: Yes, Brad Pitt and Damson Idris are really driving the cars in this movie. In fact, their authentic driving has become, in many ways, the very emotional core of the production. Director Joseph Kosinski, the visionary behind Top Gun: Maverick, had a stated goal from the outset: to create "the most authentic, realistic, and grounded racing movie ever made." This meant pushing the boundaries of filmmaking technology. Kosinski and his team further miniaturized the IMAX-certified cameras they developed for Maverick, mounting them directly into the cockpits of the race cars to truly put the audience in the driver’s seat of the greatest racing series on earth. And that, unequivocally, meant putting its stars in the driver’s seat too.
The roar echoes again, winding through the low-speed turns beneath the enormous, iridescent hotel, then—whaaaa!—Pitt’s car races down the straight again, with such pandemonium and power that it drops the floor out of your guts like the best idea you’ve ever had.
Seven-time F1 world champion and first-time producer Lewis Hamilton observes, “The most interesting thing about Brad is that he’s already a bit of a racer at heart.” Mega-producer Jerry Bruckheimer enthusiastically adds, “Brad is having the time of his life.” Pitt’s producing partner, Jeremy Kleiner, watching from the pit wall, speculates, “I think for Brad there’s probably a physiological component to the driving, a spiritual high.”
Pitt’s connection to speed isn’t new. Though he’s never been in a racing movie, he honed his skills on dirt bikes in Missouri, eventually graduating to racing bikes on tracks for pure enjoyment. Years ago, he and Tom Cruise were even attached to a version of the Ford v Ferrari story, with Kosinski initially on board as director. Both Pitt and Cruise were adamant about doing their own driving, a sentiment echoed by their director. However, Kosinski recalls, the studio at the time wouldn’t meet the proposed budget for such ambitious realism.
So, when Kosinski approached Pitt with the concept for a Formula 1 movie, Pitt’s immediate, almost instinctive question was: “Well, can we do it for real?”
The commitment to authentic driving was firm, but the insurance company, understandably, needed some serious convincing about the necessity of absolute top speed. "The idea of going down a freeway 180 miles an hour sounds completely reckless and dangerous—just absolutely not,” Pitt explains before a session in Abu Dhabi. “But these things, the more you pick up speed, that’s when everything starts working.” Paradoxically, Pitt argued that putting a limit on the speed would be more dangerous. To maintain grip, these machines demand increased downforce and heat in the tires, and that, as Pitt succinctly puts it, "you can only maintain grip by going f***ing fast."
The unspoken mandate was clear: "We cannot let Brad Pitt die"—a perfectly reasonable stance from the insurance company's perspective. But they had to grasp the essence of Formula 1. This wasn’t a mere car chase. During training, Pitt’s stunt driver, former Formula 2 champion Luciano Bacheta, would issue speed-limit warnings that Pitt would readily admit he was ignoring. “I became quite impassioned, needlessly,” Pitt confesses, finding it "actually quite comical in the end. And then when they finally lifted it and just trusted us and let us be, everything was lovely.”
He's melting tenths of seconds off his lap times, all while simultaneously acting for each of the cameras mounted on the car. As he passes, the live feeds on crew members' phones reveal the dramatic lights racing across his helmet, refracting in the turns. The visceral vibrations of the car cutting a corner and bouncing over a curve register just as they would in a Grand Prix broadcast. This, Pitt emphasizes, was the irrefutable proof that convinced everyone to go all-in on authenticity: you simply cannot replicate that effect with a green screen.
Kim Bodnia, who plays the team principal of Pitt’s fictional APXGP racing team, marvels at the dual challenge: "I can’t imagine what it would be like to act while in the car. The fastness! The focus required to drive, the focus required to act, and he’s doing both! When I first saw him in that car, I was so scared. We’re not making this movie!” He mimes a spinout. "But look at us now.” Sarah Niles, who plays Idris’s mother in the film, perfectly encapsulates the audience's anticipation: “It’s the sort of thing that gives the feeling of being a kid at the cinema again." The belching beast thunders into turn one again, fireworks detonating overhead.
As the multi-year, globe-spanning, strike-interrupted production draws to a close, Pitt reveals his personal countdown: “I’ve been counting down. I get three drives left, I have two drives left…. I couldn’t even sleep last night.” Now, he is down to his last drive. An edge still hangs in the air. The primary goal remains: We cannot let Brad Pitt die.
Beyond that, the stakes are astronomical. They’ve poured three years of work, 18 months of filming through writers’ and actors’ strikes, across three continents, and amidst 14 real-live Formula 1 Grands Prix. They’ve invested over $200 million. They’ve reengineered camera placements and what they can capture. They’ve promised to put the audience inside the race car. They’ve put movie stars in the freaking race car. They’ve minted a new star in Damson Idris. They’ve put Brad Pitt on the poster. As Kleiner succinctly puts it on the pit wall, "This one is for all of the marbles.” If this movie—the equivalent of "Top Gun, but make it race cars"—isn’t a hit, then what kind of industry are we in?
Whaaaa! There he goes again. One last lap. It looks like he’s going to make it into the pits safely. Which means all they’ve got left to worry about is all the rest.
The genesis of this ambitious project lies in Joseph Kosinski’s early COVID days, spent binge-watching the F1 docuseries Drive to Survive. A mechanical engineer and architect by training, Kosinski had just wrapped Top Gun: Maverick and developed an insatiable need for speed. While he’d dabbled with racing elements in his 2010 Tron reboot and developed his own version of the Ford v Ferrari story, Maverick had refined his unique technical prowess for filming objects (and movie stars) in motion in unprecedented ways. Top Gun: Maverick, which grossed $1.5 billion and became one of Hollywood’s rare recent megahits, focused on the best of the best. What resonated with Kosinski about Drive to Survive and F1 was its ability to make audiences care about even the underdog teams and their relentless pursuit of a single championship point or a solitary race win.
While Maverick was in post-production, Kosinski shared his initial F1 movie concept with Jerry Bruckheimer, the undisputed king of the candy-colored action smash. Bruckheimer, who hadn't made a racing movie since 1990’s Days of Thunder, was intrigued by the idea of bringing that treatment to the world's most popular racing series. Days of Thunder, produced with NASCAR’s partnership, hadn't quite delivered the authenticity some in the sport hoped for. For an F1 film, Kosinski and Bruckheimer envisioned a true integration with the F1 season, creating a film that would resonate with both insiders and casual viewers.
Historically, F1 has preferred to control its own narrative, but Drive to Survive had opened the door for external access. Kosinski also held a crucial ace: during Maverick’s casting, Lewis Hamilton, having obtained Cruise's contact, emailed out of the blue, seeking an audition. Hamilton, mid-season and in a title fight, couldn't commit, but he and Kosinski kept the door open. In late 2021, Kosinski and Bruckheimer met with Hamilton at the San Vicente Bungalows, persuading him to join as a producer to bolster the script's racing authenticity and liaise with F1 brass. Kosinski knew that to secure studio funding, everyone attached needed to be "undeniably perfect." Apple, he reveals, fully grasped the vision and was willing to provide the necessary capital.
The ambitious plan, contingent on F1’s assent, involved fully integrating the production into a real F1 season. They would effectively become the "11th team" in the 10-team sport, packing up their bespoke garage, cars, crew, and drivers, and moving to the next race on the calendar, just like any other team. They would film with real crews and drivers in the background, position their cars on the track alongside genuine F1 vehicles, and even stand on the podium should Pitt’s fictional APXGP team find its way to the top.
Such an incursion was a massive ask for F1, a sport reportedly valued at $22 billion. But it was a boldness only Hollywood could muster. In February 2022, Kosinski, Bruckheimer, and Pitt flew to London to pitch F1 president and CEO Stefano Domenicali. Top Gun: Maverick hadn't even premiered yet, but Kosinski arranged a private IMAX screening three months early. “I think that’s when Stefano saw the potential of the film,” Kosinski recalls. With Hamilton on board, F1 knew their cherished series was in highly capable hands.
One final, critical matter remained: Hamilton needed to be sure Pitt could really drive. In early 2022, Hamilton joined Pitt and Kosinski at the Porsche Experience Center in Los Angeles. Hamilton, fresh off his championship duel with Max Verstappen in Abu Dhabi, closely observed Pitt as he whipped around the track in a 911 GT3. Hamilton immediately recognized Pitt's innate driving ability. This was familiar territory for Hamilton, who, as a teenager growing up in a council estate, used to teach "rich guys" how to drive race cars at similar facilities. After a while, Hamilton jumped into the driver’s seat himself: "Brad, let me take you for a spin."
Kosinski vividly recounts the moment: “There’s this one part of the track where there’s a long straightaway, and then a carousel, which is a banked bowl that you shoot down and you dive into it and it slingshots you back. And I dunno what the speed limit is going into that, but I watched Lewis take Brad into that carousel at I think two times the speed limit. And they just disappeared and I saw a puff of dust that just erupted into the air. And they came back and the door flung open, and Brad kind of jumped out of the car sweating, and Lewis had the biggest smile on his face. He had obviously done something that scared the hell out of Brad, but I think he just wanted to give Brad a little taste of what it means to be on the edge. I think it hooked him in that moment too.”
With the final lap complete and the stars safely in the pits, the anticipation for this groundbreaking F1 film reaches fever pitch. It’s a project born from passion, fueled by technological innovation, and grounded in an uncompromising commitment to authenticity. Get ready, because the race is on.
