The boss of struggling Formula 1 team APX GP (Javier Bardem) recruits old friend and maverick racer Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) in a last ditch effort to turn things around and save the team. 

Sonny was once an exciting young driver in Formula 1 with the world at his feet, but an horrific crash left him broken and jobless. After years away he began to turn his hand to any type of racing available. Chasing his redemption whilst living out of a camper van. 

His new team mate in APX GP is the young and brilliant Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) whose talent is only matched by his arrogance. Can the maverick driver who once lost it all mentor the young upstart into something more mature capable of winning races? 

APX GP’s technical director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon) is also the first woman in the role out to prove a point. Pearce’s feedback however is not detailed enough to help her improve the ‘shit box’ of a car they currently run, so will her job be improved by having a more experienced hand involved? 

Outside of the racing cars these relationships play out exactly as you would expect. Varying levels of wariness and dislike gradually turn to mutual respect and friendship. The key to everything working is Brad Pitt’s magnetic charisma and chemistry with everyone involved. 

But it is inside the cars where everything is elevated. You will be routing for Hayes and Pierce to overtake their rivals as they search for the win that will save the team. 

F1 is as perfectly constructed a sports action movie as the high performance machines the protagonists of this film race during it. F1 features as many sports movie cliches as you can imagine. It has complete access to the F1 brand, its tracks and drivers to deliver realism. And it delivers absolute believability by having its stars drive for real (in modified F2 cars) with specially designed IMAX cameras mounted on the cars. 

There are some large flaws that will impact your enjoyment depending on how well you can move them to the back of your mind. The largest of them for me is that every race is commentated on by the real life commentary team of David Croft and Martin Brundle and as with any commentary in sports some of it can be so banal it can make your eyes roll. But I also understand that they want people who have no idea of the rules of the sport to understand what is happening and this is how they chose to do it. The next issue is the access all areas sponsorship by F1 that allows everything to look so real also means we get the occasional sycophantic moments featuring real personalities of the sport who cannot act. And finally, anyone who is familiar with the sport might find some of the tactics utilised push the realms of plausibility. 

But despite this the filmmakers have put everything together so expertly that those flaws mostly fade into the background as you root for Sonny to find what he is looking for. 

Director Joseph Kosinski has some serious skills in putting together large scale blockbusters with the likes of Tron: Legacy and Oblivion in his credits list. But the biggest touchstone is Top Gun Maverick which he delivered with writer Ehren Kruger in 2022. The comparisons are clear – an aging maverick pilot/driver played by a charismatic film star born in the early 1960’s (Tom Cruise/Brad Pitt) shows the younger generation how things are done whilst mentoring them to bigger and better things. Add in a dedication to absolute realism in the flying/driving scenes that result in you internally cheering them to their goals and you have a recipe for success. 

One final thought… Brad Pitt has always drawn comparisons for me to the great Robert Redford whom he starred alongside in Spy Game. But here as the maverick and enigmatic racer it was Paul Newman he reminded me of. And frankly there is no greater compliment to an actor. 

A crowd pleasing thrill ride.