‘F1’ Trailer: Brad Pitt and Damson Idris Electrify the Racing Circuit in Heart-Pounding New Footage

Start your engines! Brad Pitt roars onto the race track — and soon the big screen — in the new trailer for “F1,” directed by “Top Gun: Maverick’s” Joseph Kosinski.

The Apple Original Film stars Pitt as former Formula 1 race car driver Sonny Hayes, described in the trailer as “the best [driver] that never was.” Javier Bardem plays the boss of an underdog race team who convinces Sonny to return to the sport to partner with and mentor rookie driver Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris). Kerry Condon, Tobias Menzies, Sarah Niles, Kim Bodnia and Samson Kayo round out the cast.

The trailer, set to Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain,” is equal parts intimate and thrilling as it puts the audience behind the wheel of Pitt and Idris’ race cars – much like “Top Gun: Maverick” strapped moviegoers into a fighter jet’s cockpit. And the stakes are as high on the ground as they were at tens of thousands of feet: win and they earn the respect of the racing world; lose and prove the naysayers right.

Related Stories

VIP+

Apple TV+ Viewership Is Surging. Is It the ‘Severance’ Halo Effect?

Colin Farrell Is in ‘No Rush’ to Do ‘The Penguin’ Season 2: ‘I Have No Deep Desire to Do It’

It doesn’t help that Sonny and Joshua don’t trust each other. As they prepare to get onto the track, the drivers get into it over the last time they won a race.

“Sunday. Daytona,” Pitt’s Sonny declares, over footage of him winning the stock car contest.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I meant Formula 1,” Joshua fires back smugly.

Sonny chuckles: “Oh, I’m sorry. Then, same as you.”

Touché. And with that tense relationship established, it’s off to the races.

During a virtual press conference hosted by British TV presenter Edith Bowman, Kosinski discussed the making of the film, explaining that he became a fan of Formula 1 racing after discovering Netflix’s “Drive to Survive” series during COVID.

“I loved how the first season of the show focused on the last place teams, the underdogs, rather than the Ferrari, the Mercedes, the Red Bull, the teams that you see at the front of the pack,” he said. “I thought that there was an interesting story to be told about an underdog team trying — not to win the championship — but just trying to win one race against these titans of the sport.”

Kosinski reached out to seven-time Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton who gave him insight into the world and signed on to produce the film under his Dawn Apollo Films banner. One objective was to capture the speed of the sport — and yes, both Kosinski and Hamilton confirmed Pitt and Idris drive at speeds over 180 mph for the film’s racing sequences. “It was an adrenaline rush every weekend, but what we captured is something you can’t fake,” the filmmaker said.

Mercedes was integral in helping Kosinski accomplish his goal of making a car that could reach such speed.

“We actually bought six real F2 race cars and worked with Mercedes AMG, the Formula 1 team and their engineers to build real race cars that could carry our camera equipment — recorders and transmitters for making this film,” Kosinski said. “So every time you see Brad or Damson driving this movie, they’re driving on their own in one of these real race cars on a real F1 track. … When you see Brad driving, that’s not acting. He’s really concentrating on keeping that car on the track and out of the wall.”

Of course, training the actors took months, but Pitt had natural ability right from the start.

“I don’t know where he got that or if he was born with it,” Kosinski said of his star, whose driving skills were key to the film’s believability in both his eyes and Hamilton’s. “He rides motorcycles, which I think has something to do with it. But he’s just a very talented, naturally gifted driver … which gave [Lewis] a lot of confidence that we might have a shot at pulling this off.”

The film works its way across the Formula 1 global circuit from Silverstone to Las Vegas, ending in Abu Dhabi. Kosinski traveled the world, watching every race on every circuit before filming on the tracks.

“Every track has its own personality, its own character,” he said. “Because we went to all of these places for real, you really feel like you’ve gone around the world when you watch the movie.”

However, Kosinski could only shoot before an actual race, which meant the production rolled between practice and qualifying races.

“We get these 10- or 15-minute slots where we’d have to have Brad and Damson ready in the cars, warmed up with hot tires ready to go, and as soon as practice ended, they would pull out onto the track,” the filmmaker explained. “We’d have 24, 30 cameras ready, rolling, and I’d have to shoot these scenes in these very short, intense, high-speed windows. But the crowd you’re seeing was really there in the stands. I don’t think the crowd realized that Brad Pitt was in the car that was in front of them.”

As for the technology, Sony custom-built cameras for the film. Kosinski and cinematographer Claudio Miranda worked with the company to create smaller cameras that could capture the high-speed thrills of car racing.

“I wanted to operate and move the cameras while we were shooting, which was something we weren’t able to do on ‘Top Gun,’ so, we have motorized mounts on the car as well,” Kosinski said. “So, you have transmitters that are transmitting the picture back [and] we’ve got transmitters controlling the movement of the camera. I’m sitting at the base station with Claudio looking at 16 screens.”

He would also communicate with the actors while they were on the track. “It was hard to hear them. They’ve got a 700-horsepower engine right behind their head,” Kosinski pointed out. Rather than telling Pitt to go faster, Kosinski joked that it was the opposite: “Slow down, please, Brad.”

Speaking of sound: another collaborator Kosinski brought back into the mix was “Top Gun: Maverick” composer Hans Zimmer.

“The score for this film is something I’m really excited for people to hear,” Konsinki said. “What Hans does, and few composers can do, is he can write a real theme, a real melody that you just can’t get out of your head.”

Warner Bros. is distributing the movie, which hits theaters and Imax screens in North America on June 27 and internationally beginning June 25.

Watch the trailer below: