by 
As in “Top Gun: Maverick”, which he also made, Joseph Kosinski plays the immersion card with “F1”. But does that mean that Brad Pitt really piloted the cars that his character leads in the film?
In 2022, the majority of the promotion of Top Gun: Maverick did not shoot so much around the return of one of the most emblematic films of the 80s, but of course that Tom Cruise and his partners had followed intense training to be able to shoot real hunting planes in flight. And that's about what we find today with F1, the new achievement of Joseph Kosinski.
By replacing Tom Cruise with Brad Pitt and the planes with racing cars, in this story that takes us behind the scenes of the Formula 1 championship, where an old glory of the circuits flies to the help of the stable of his former partner (Javier Bardem) and must tame his new teammate (Damson Idris), brut diamond which asks to be polite on the asphalt of the circuits.
Three years after Top Gun: Maverick, Joseph Kosinski therefore replayed the immersion card, to make us live the races as close as possible to the pilots and their vehicles. But does that mean that Brad Pitt and his partners really led the racing cars in question for the needs of the film? Yes and no. “”F1 is the first car film where the actors are filmed in the car “said the star in London, the evening of the film's preview on the evening, while components of iPhones have notably been used to develop a camera allowing to be as close as possible to them and follow their point of view. In addition to captured plans thanks to objectives set on the front of the chassis.
So Brad Pitt and Damson Idris have led the cars of the film, except that it was not “that” From F2 or F3 made up to look like F1 (in the same way as Tom Cruise and the actors of Top Gun: Maverick could not really pilot the characters themselves, even if they were on board). This does not mean that the preparation was not intensive, quite the contrary: “Brad gave Damson 4 months to be able to drive one of the film's cars”explains producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
“There were fifteen cameras around cars”
“And it's so difficult. Being able to make your turns, take 5g, ride at 290 km/h remembering your dialogue, all with a camera just in front of you that hides part of your field of vision. There were fifteen cameras around the cars, and we used four at a time not to brake the cars. We worked closely with the F1 teams and the pilots, so that everything is possible and as possible. The pilots were to be convinced that they would not be the bad guys in the film.
“When I was called for this film and that I was told that Joseph Kosinski wanted to put actors in the cars and on racing tracks, I was like crazy. And happy”says Brad Pitt, while the filmmaker was also able to benefit from the real circuits on which the races take place to put his cameras there. Which added an additional challenge: “The most difficult was time, having very narrow windows to be able to shoot the racing scenes, but also the dramatic scenes, because we were running on the circuits in front of a real audience.”
“It is absolutely not in this way that we turn blockbusters like this usually”
“We sometimes only had five or ten minutes to do it, which means only two or three taken. It is absolutely not in this way that we turn blockbusters like this one usually. It forced everyone to be ready, alert and be at the height of his game. But it also offers the film a raw energy that we could not have had otherwise.” And that is indeed what makes the strength of F1, in addition to making us see behind the scenes in the middle, so the game was worth the candle.
Interview by Clara Braccini and Olivier Portnoi in London on June 21 and 23, 2025
