Brad Pitt's 'F1' Movie Looks Rad As Hell

Photo: Warner Bros / YouTube

The first teaser trailer for the upcoming Formula 1 movie, simply titled “F1” because of brand equity, debuted during the pre-race festivities before Sunday’s British Grand Prix. The Brad Pitt-led movie will undoubtedly feature a cliché narrative, cheezy dialogue and lazy archetypal characters, but I don’t care. Next summer, the theater-going public is in store for the most exhilarating racing footage ever put on the silver screen.

F1 – Official Teaser – Warner Bros. UK & Ireland

The teaser opens with Pitt naming all five teams in the top half of the F1 grid and stating that his fictional outfit has a power deficit to all of them. He then tells Kerry Condon, presumably playing an engineer, “Our shot is battling in the turns. We need to build our car for combat.” It’s just shorthand to illustrate the team’s position as an underdog, but no one within F1 would ever say this. If someone can outrun you in a straight line, you don’t stand a chance. You’re a sitting duck the first time through a DRS zone.

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Dialogue’s over. It’s time for the action! There are plenty of shots of the APX cars running wheel-to-wheel and crashing at various circuits on the calendar. The trailer ends with a long onboard shot of Pitt driving at Silverstone. It’s supposed to be impressive that he is the one driving an F2 car mocked up to look like F1 machinery. I’m most amazed by the static camera shots because an actual race broadcast would never get that close to the track. It creates an immense sense of speed.

It’s easy to forget how awesome racing looks because of how normal races are shot. Television production relies on wide-angle shots so viewers can easily identify cars and follow the running order at the cost of the visceral experience of 1,000-hp going around a track.

Sure, there are some nitpicks in the trailer you could make here and there, like the APXGP garage is absurdly pristine. There’s none of the grime or clutter someone would see if they had to move around a team garage. However, it’s clear that “F1” wants to translate the experience of actually being on track. With the project reportedly blown through its $300 million budget, it better look this good.