This Is Not The F1 Movie Fans Deserve

It's 6a.m. on Sunday morning. Everyone shut up, my show is on.

Formula One has been a part of my life as long as I can remember. When I was a little kid, it was always on the TV, and the scream of 20 V8 engines careening around the track at over 300 kilometers per hour left a permanent mark on my childhood. As I've grown up, I've become even more immersed in the world of F1. Every race weekend, I'm locked in, up bright and early to watch a race happening 5 timezones away. So you'd think that the new F1 movie hitting theatres this summer would be right up my alley. But you'd be wrong.

Ever since the the first trailer for F1 dropped, I've been having a dilemma. Throughout 2024, it was common to see filming for the movie taking place during race weekends. Real cars, real circuits, real drivers. They even made drivers George Russell and Charles Leclerc re-film a podium after the season finale in Abu Dhabi (they looked miserable). Despite the apparent fidelity to modern F1, there are more than a few things that bother me about the upcoming movie.

First of all, Brad Pitt is 61. There is no chance in hell of seeing a 61-year-old race in F1, let alone win. It would be like seeing Nico Hülkenberg get a podium, or Lance Stroll win a World Drivers' Championship. It's not happening. For context, the oldest racers in the game right now are Lewis Hamilton, 40, and Fernando Alonso, 43. Both are multi-time World Campions, and still many fans are wondering when they will finally retire. In the entire history of F1, no one older than 55 has even started a race. And that was in 1955! But just for the sake of argument, let's say I accept that a new team on the grid signs the oldest driver in history, who's never even won a Grand Prix, to head up their new team. I don't, but let's say I do. I still have one major bone to pick, and this one truly makes me mad.

In 2025, Laura Müller became the first female race engineer in the history of Formula One. That's 75 years of racing, and one female race engineer. Needless to say, it was a big deal. I was genuinely ecstatic when I found out, and even more excited when I realized that Sonny Hayes' (Pitt) race engineer in the new movie would be played by a woman. That's why the trailers, featuring Sonny locked in a passionate embrace with said race engineer, felt like a slap in the face. I'm used to the stereotype of women being cast as love interests. I've grown numb to it. If I got upset about every shoehorned romance in mainstream movies, I'd be mad forever. In this case though, it stung. Not only is it totally unnecessary for the plot of the film, it also perpetuates harmful stereotypes about women in positions of power. If the only reason that F1 is giving us a female race engineer in the first place is to manufacture a love interest for the lead, then it's not a step forward. It's a step back. Not just for the movie, but for the sport as a whole.

With the creation of the all-female racing series F1 Academy, and now Müller's new position as race engineer, it finally felt like maybe F1 was becoming less of a boys' club. I love this sport, but as a female fan, it can be hard to be taken seriously. Men always assume that I don't actually understand how racing works, or that I only watch because I've got the hots for the drivers. And they don't take kindly to it when I prove them wrong by explaining DRS and tire deg. Pretty much all of the other women who I've spoken to about this share the same experience. It doesn't matter how passionate or knowledgeable we are, there's still the sense that we have to prove that we are real fans. Oh, I'm sorry, does every man who watches F1 know who won the Championship in 1992? No? Then stop quizzing me, and let me watch the damn race.

It was Nigel Mansell, by the way, Craig. In a Williams. Designed by Adrian Newey. Is that enough for you?

Despite a significant female fanbase, there are very few women involved in F1. We have F1 Academy, but when it comes to the main event, the most you see of women is when the broadcasters cut to the drivers' mothers and girlfriends during the race for a reaction shot. Because of that, hearing Müller's voice over the radio each weekend never fails to make me smile. I was so excited to see some female representation included in this modern take on F1. I thought that maybe it would inspire girls to pursue careers in racing or engineering, so watching the trailer only to see Kerry Condon's character reduced to a love interest was incredibly disappointing.

All in all, the plot of the movie makes one thing clear: F1 wasn't made for the fans. Female or otherwise. I'm not going to be super picky about the fact that the sport is going to be dumbed down a bit for average viewers. Tire compounds and setup changes after free practice wouldn't make for a film that everyone can enjoy. F1 is definitely going to be a Hollywood take on the sport. That's not even necessarily a bad thing. Done right, a movie that makes the sport more accessible to the masses could be a great idea. But they went with the laziest option imaginable.

The old-timer given a second chance, paired up with a fiery rookie to drive fast and accomplish something impossible? Sounds like Top Gun 2.5; not exactly what I was hoping for.

The story being what it is though, it makes sense that Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski is also at the helm of F1. The driving action and onboard shots we've seen in the trailer do look cool. But they also look just like everything we see during a regular race weekend. I'm positive you could take clips from old races, edit them together, and set them to music, and it would be just as good. I don't doubt that for people new to F1, these scenes will be very fun to watch, but if, as a fan, that's all I really have to look forward to, what's the point?

More than anything, I'm frustrated by the angle this movie is taking. F1 is the sport most primed for a fantastic cinematic take. There are so many new avenues that the story could have gone down without relying on a second-chance narrative or a race engineer love interest. Yes, I'm still mad. F1 has unlimited amounts of action, interpersonal conflicts, and scandals already baked into the sport.

As recent seasons have shown, F1 is rife with drama. There are upsets, cheating scandals, abrupt driver swaps, crashes and near misses. These happens every single year. They made a whole reality show about it for crying out loud. The fact that the best they could come up with, with over $300 million dollars at their disposal, was that Brad Pitt returns to F1 after 30 years, fights with his young teammate and makes out with his female race engineer!? It just... Like I said, it's frustrating.

Even if you don't base the movie off of true events, there are so many recent real-life F1 stories that could have helped inspire an amazing movie. There's Mercedes' civil war, Crashgate, the Cinderella story of Brawn GP, Alpine's eternal determination to fumble every good driver that has ever entered the team, the entirety of the 2021 season! If you aren't a fan of the sport, I probably sound like a raving lunatic. Maybe I am. But my point stands. F1 fans, and female fans in particular, are getting short-shrifted. Kind of like Liam Lawson in the Red Bull this season. Okay fine, I'm done.

Will the racing sequences in the new movie be cool? Probably. Will non-fans have a good time? For sure. But for me, F1 is missing the mark. I would have given anything for a movie about my favourite sport a few years ago, but after what I've seen, it's out of obligation rather than excitement that I'm heading to the theatre in June. No matter how much I want it to be good, I have a sneaking suspicion that I'll be disappointed by F1. I find solace in the fact that no matter what happens, I'll still have races to watch on Sunday morning.