For F1: The Movie, filmmakers strapped cameras to race cars weaving in and out of the action at real Formula 1 races. Actors Brad Pitt and Damson Idris even learned to drive the cars to get close-up shots of their faces while on the track. Pitt has said he spent “four to five months” learning to drive a race car well enough for these scenes. But in truth, he already knew his way around a racetrack. Lewis Hamilton even put him through a sort of audition before he landed the role.

Testing whether an “adrenaline junkie” can drive a race car

After the success of Top Gun: Maverick, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Joseph Kosinski set their sights on the Formula 1 racing series. First, they recruited Lewis Hamilton as an executive producer. Then they began searching for a star.

Later, Pitt’s F1 driving instructor would tell The New York Times that the actor is “a bit of an adrenaline junkie.” Pitt is open about his love for motorcycles and his deep love of the MotoGP racing series. He’s mentioned he does regular track days on a racing bike and has narrated multiple MotoGP documentaries. His instructor added, “he had a fairly high understanding” of the mechanics of motor racing. But Pitt is the first to admit he had no real expertise, and his instructor agreed he didn’t have “a high experience of track driving.”

The situation called for an on-track audition.

In early 2022, Lewis and Kosinski invited Pitt to the Porsche Experience Center in Los Angeles. Lewis supervised Pitt driving a few laps in a 911 GT3. Then he asked if the actor wanted to ride shotgun. With a seven-time F1 world champion? Who would say no?

Kosinski will never forget: “They disappeared and I only saw a cloud of dust.” The lap lasted for mere minutes, but it must have felt like an eternity for Pitt. “They came back, the door opened wide, and Brad jumped out all sweaty, while Lewis had a huge smile on his face.” As disheveled as Pitt may have looked, Lewis gave him the thumbs-up. This guy could hang.

Bad habits to “iron out”

F1 teams have two drivers and field two cars. The movie’s fictional team—Apex Grand Prix (APX GP)—comprised rookie driver Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) and veteran out-of-retirement Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt).

The filmmakers split their drivers into two teams. British racing driver Craig Dolby was Brad Pitt’s stunt double and trained Damson Idris to drive. Stuntman and retired racing driver Luciano Bacheta served as Damson Idris’ stunt double and trained Brad Pitt to drive. This way, when either actor got on the track to film close-ups, they were driving next to their instructor.

Both actors began by racing sports cars around the track, similar to the Porsche 911 GT3 from Brad Pitt’s “audition.” Then they graduated to open-wheeled Formula Three race cars. Finally, they got to drive the modified Formula Two cars used to film F1: The Movie.

“When you first start, you’re making big jumps — gaining seconds. And as the months go by, you’re fighting for quarters of seconds. The first month is just learning to trust the car — that it will stick to the ground, will stop, even when you’re heading for a wall. The more you put into it, the better it sticks, the faster you can whip around a corner, even as every instinct in your body is screaming, ‘No! No! No! No! No! It’s gonna give way, it’s gonna give way, it’s gonna give way!’”

— Brad Pitt

Bacheta admits they started 33-year-old Idris a bit earlier. He was “a blank canvas, which was nice, because there were no habits to have to iron out.” Pitt, on the other hand, insisted on the reckless techniques Hamilton had used to test his nerves.

“Lewis had told him that you hit the brake as hard as you can, which is the case sometimes in F1, but not always. So the first time we went out on track, I had Brad in my mirrors, and every time he hit the brakes, the wheels were locked up. He was absolutely killing them.”

— Luciano Bacheta, racing instructor and stunt driver

Bacheta also says the actor “got really competitive with [me] at times, which was scary, and we’d start to just have a sort of a dummy race.” But the instructor rolled with it and began setting challenges to push Pitt to pick up the sport faster. “You’re going to stay ahead of me. I’m going to be behind, and you can’t let me pass.”

Four months to learn, a lifetime to master

F1: The Movie filmed at Formula 1 races during both the 2023 and 2024 seasons. Brad Pitt says that during the first weekend of filming, “I felt a bit like a horse’s a–.” Because for the first scene, he and Idris stood at the end of the line of “real F1 drivers”—the real guys—while the UK’s national anthem rang out and fighter jets screamed overhead.

Pitt says, “You just had to swallow it and go, ‘This is my job, this is what I’ve gotta do.’”

He adds that the racers and the sport were incredibly welcoming. “Certainly by the end of it, again, we felt like we were in our own backyard.” While his confidence portraying Sonny Hayes increased, so did his confidence as a driver.

Bacheta says that after just several months of training, Pitt was more than capable of filming a close-up while driving a Formula Two car at 180+ mph on an empty track. But during the first season of filming, the crew wasn’t about to risk a spin or crash in front of fans and never put the actors in the cars during race weekend. By year two, Pitt had no fear of driving in front of a crowd.

Several interviewers have asked Pitt if he’s considering racing professionally after this movie, and he always laughs in their face. Most Formula One drivers started racing karts professionally by the time they were six and have been on a track almost every day of their lives since. Few folks know firsthand how exceptional these drivers are—but Brad Pitt does.

Though F1: The Movie used stretched Formula Two cars with Mercedes’ F1 aero package, McLaren invited Pitt to drive a hot lap in a true F1 car—after filming had wrapped. He called it one of the greatest perks of his career.

Check out the final trailer for F1: The Movie embedded below: