The producers of the official Formula 1 movie, ‘F1’, have revealed the final trailer ahead of its launch next month.
The trailer reveals more details of the film’s plot, which sees Brad Pitt cast as Sonny Hayes, a former racing driver who returns to F1 alongside a rookie team mate, Joshua Pearce, played by Damson Idris.Footage for the film was shot at several grands prix during the 2023 and 2024 seasons, as well as on location at a number of F1 venues.
The trailer shows the APX cars blended into real-world footage of other cars on-track including Red Bull at Silverstone, Aston Martin at Monza and Ferrari at Yas Marina. Notable moments from recent seasons are identifiable, such as the first-lap collision at the start of the 2023 Mexican Grand Prix which put Sergio Perez out of his home race.
The Las Vegas Grand Prix features prominently among the action sequences in the new trailer. A spectacular crash occurs on the start-finish straight – spectators at the race last year participated in the filming of this. Pitt is also seen jogging through the city in one scene.
The filmmakers have also shot footage in and around the McLaren Technology Centre. Idris’s character can be seen training in front of the lake at the MTC, where a large ‘APX’ logo is visible, and a press conference scene involving the fictional team mates has been filmed there.
Other prominent characters seen in the film include APX GP team principal Ruben Cervantes, played by Javier Bardem, and technical director Kate McKenna, played by Kerry Condon. “F1: The Movie” also stars Tobias Menzies and Kim Bodnia.
The film will open in cinemas in many countries internationally on June 25th, and in north America from June 27th.
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Sonny Crockett (@sonnycrockett)
12th May 2025, 14:34
Exciting trailer.
As always, could be great, could be shocking.
BasCB (@bascb)
12th May 2025, 14:47
Yeah, the trailer looks sleek. But we’ll have to see whether the movie itself is good, decent, great or ridiculous.
bernasaurus (@bernasaurus)
12th May 2025, 15:19
As much as this doesn’t interest me. I’m please we’ve moved on from the CVC / Bernie years where everything was locked away. We might be nostalgic for a young Fernando winning the title with a V10. But the reality is the sport was struggling massively at the time. Attendances were down, it didn’t know if it wanted behind a paywall or not, anything uploaded was taken down and CVC (and Bernie) took every penny they could.
That 20 years later Brad Pitt wants to make a silly movie and is allowed to, and people will probably watch it…….. We’ve come along way, and the sport is better for it. Sometimes it seems strange that F1 has an audience.
Despite having only seen a couple of trailers I’m pretty sure I can figure out the plot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-tU2KIAMrs
MichaelN
12th May 2025, 17:26
Was it? There were obviously issues post-2008 (as everywhere, thanks banks). But it seems the aggregate viewer counts that F1 reported didn’t really drop until a few years later, and then kept sliding in the V6 era until Liberty was able to really bring F1 into the online age (and changed way the the metrics are calculated, there’s also that – but that might be fair, a simple TV-only count is no longer relevant in the new model).
rob91
12th May 2025, 17:54
F1 was booming in the 2000’s, great TV coverage available for free in alot of places, mass manufacturer interest, a lot of highly skilled drivers with personalities, incredible cars that piqued the senses in just about every way. It didn’t need a movie or a series of overly dramatic documentary shows back then, it does now apparently.
bob
12th May 2025, 16:00
Drive to Survive – The Movie.
Patrick (@paeschli)
14th May 2025, 7:59
Drive to Survive pretends to be real. At least here you know it’s made up.
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
12th May 2025, 16:10
Looks pretty good, race sequences look way less lame than some where they are clearly racing at pit limiter speed; Im looking at you Rush. Far more like the Steve McQueens Le Mans. The crash at Copse is an eye opener bearing in mind the two protagonists race and a certain 2021 crash on that corner between two long forgotten F1 drivers ;0
MacLeod (@macleod)
13th May 2025, 7:50
@tonymansell two certain 2021 crashes :)
Biggsy
12th May 2025, 16:44
I guess I’m gonna be the first to ask.
But why nobody stopped to ask themselves, why does F1 need a movie in the first place?
I mean, we already have F1 to watch. This thing can’t really give us more racing. So what is it that is supposed to bring?
The answer is: drama. It’s supposed to bring more drama. But not the good kind, the on-track drama that unfolds in an unpredictable race. It’s supposed to be bring cheap, soap-opera kind of drama. As if that’s something that an average F1 fan needs.
And with all this in mind, we’re left wondering, who’s the target audience for this film?
My conclusion is that the target audience aren’t F1 fans, but casual movie-watchers. The infamous “younger fans”.
All that is perfectly find, but I just don’t understand why are we, the people who are hanging out on this kind of forums, constantly bombarded with this flick. As if it’s supposed to give it some credibility, if it’s associated with the stuff the fans are actually interested in. Like it’s mingling with the actual F1 content, in order to appear like a genuine F1 movie, when it’s actually a soap opera.
Ideals (@ideals)
12th May 2025, 17:05
Grand Prix is one of the best racing movies ever made, and I don’t understand why you are having such a reaction to it being made. Just enjoy the craft of movie making, especially one where such care is taken to film real racing on a real track with techniques that blew everyone’s minds. I watch it once every few years and I love it more on every new viewing. Bonus point for using actual racing legends in it, too.
An Sionnach
12th May 2025, 18:00
If Grand Prix didn’t exist it would be a terrible thing to somehow prevent it from being released.
This isn’t going to be anything like Grand Prix, but it’s looking better with some friction between the drivers. Might still just be Brad Pit helps younger driver achieve… something. Maybe a race win and the survival of the team would be enough, but this is Hollywood. If they beat Max then it would hardly be believable, but then Jim Clark was beaten by the actors in Grand Prix.
An Sionnach
12th May 2025, 18:23
Pitt
Ideals (@ideals)
12th May 2025, 18:39
While narratively it’s obviously quite different, where Grand Prix was more typical 60s romance and this will obviously be more action oriented (and obviously more played to the audiences of today rather than those of 60 years ago). I do think there will still be a lot of influence from Grand Prix in the way the racing is shot, going by the trailer.
For those interested, so something good can come from the OP and it’s not a complete waste of space. I highly recommend Patrick Willems’ essay on Grand Prix and the movies it influenced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPnTm8C_OfY
An Sionnach
12th May 2025, 23:08
Thanks, I’ll take a look. Grand Prix is a great film. Looks great today and feels real.
An Sionnach
12th May 2025, 23:13
I really wanted Yves Montand to win the championship for Ferrari in Grand Prix.
An Sionnach
12th May 2025, 23:17
In case it isn’t clear, I’m not saying that this film is looking better than Grand Prix. I don’t expect it to come close to that. The friction in this trailer is an improvement on what was shown in previous trailers. Still not sure how it will turn out. Might be worth a look, though.
MacLeod (@macleod)
13th May 2025, 8:00
@ideals Grand Prix is indeed a great movie from that era a lot of drama&romanticed. So I will check this movie out as the onboard are very high detail beter then we have from F1TV.
I wonder how the results in the movie will be….
Mach1 (@mach1)
12th May 2025, 17:10
But that applies to any move about sport. It’s not there to try and replicate the sport’s live nature. That would be pointless. So of course it’s there for the drama, action and, to attract a wider audience.
You could apply your argument to films like Rocky, Ali, Raging Bull. And sure, Boxing fans may scoff at the depiction of some of the boxing. But that does not make them necessarily any less enjoyable, even for boxing fans
So why not have an F1 film. I have enjoyed quite a few of the F1 related/motorsport films…but, i don’t get caught up in the fact they are not always true to what fans know actually happens.
MichaelN
12th May 2025, 17:29
F1 is largely a soap opera. Half the stories are about the personalities and their post-race bickering about incidents.
While the technological side enhances the story lines (who’s up, who’s down?) they are in and of themselves not very interesting to the larger public. Plus the amount of room teams have to differentiate from the rules is very small these days, hence the very tight field.
The on track action can’t hold a candle to some other forms of racing, but again, it’s not that important. It’s the fact that it feeds into the story lines of a season that makes it interesting. Piastri can cruise to a win and bore everyone, but if it means drama at McLaren or pressure on Red Bull? That’s when it gets interesting.
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
12th May 2025, 18:42
Bombarded? You clicked on it and proceeded to tell everyone over 3 torturous paragraphs why you are above such hokum. Its a bit of fun, NONE OF IT, is important unless you earn your living from it.
Sergey Martyn
12th May 2025, 16:52
Before reading the title seeing the burning car I was thinking that was some article about Grosjean fire in Bahrain.
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
12th May 2025, 18:00
First time I have seen a trailer for the film or any scenes from it. It looks pretty good. Certainly the on-track/circuit parts. Plot looks like it might be a little predictable for I can see myself watching it.
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
12th May 2025, 18:01
but (not for).
verstappen (@verstappen)
12th May 2025, 19:35
I so thoroughly despice spoilers that I’m not gonna watch the trailer – never watch them
I even have a “hide images” extension in my webbrowser since F1TV spoiled Monaco with a picture of the crashed red bull.
Ideals (@ideals)
12th May 2025, 20:23
I don’t think a first lap first corner incident can really be a spoiler. It’s like when people cry spoiler because you discussed something that happens in the first 30s of a show, that’s just being too sensitive.
verstappen (@verstappen)
12th May 2025, 22:29
I didn’t- and did not want to – know, if there was an incident or not, and a picture doesn’t tell you at what lap an incident is.
With a show, you can later tell about all the other things that happened, and as far as I recall it wasn’t a very exciting race apart from the incident. So in this case to me not comparable.
I guess one picture Probably wouldn’t have spoiled the brazilian gp of 2016, but you don’t know what will happen and that’s what I like.
Konstantinos
13th May 2025, 12:53
I’m with you, I don’t like spoilers no matter how early in a thing.
The worst I F1 related one I had was while browsing a video games forum I read a post title (didn’t even have to click it) congratulating Verstappen on his fist championship win before I had seen that last race. One of the most tense races I have ever seen which was undecided until the very end and I knew already… I mean, what on earth was that…
Deep Sky
14th May 2025, 20:54
Ouch. That is truly a big spoiler spoiling the season.
Nulla Pax (@nullapax)
12th May 2025, 20:08
I won’t be going to see it.
I like Brad, an underrated actor in my opinion, even though he is box office gold.
But this isn’t the kind of HollyCrud stuff that I like to watch.
What I am looking forwards to however, are the pictures of Dominocally etc, rushing out from the Premier in paroxysms of joy over the greatest F1 movie ever made!!!!!!! … etc
Stevan Vasiljević
12th May 2025, 21:13
As a long time F1 fan, I will be watching the movie. Racing looks exciting and that is all I expect from the movie. I am sure the plot will be by the numbers, but I don’t think it will ruin the overall experience.
Don
13th May 2025, 13:56
I’m sure this will suck, as most racing movies do.
Gary
14th May 2025, 9:42
I’ll watch until the first time a driver downshifts to execute a passing maneuver.