Motor races to life or not, F1 movie draws decades of drama | Mint

By Alan Baldwin London (Reuters) -The race scenes in the new F1 film of Brad Pitt are impressive authentic, but the filmmakers also made a lot of how the sport’s past was woven into the plot -with a large part of the Hollywood artistic license. “We’ve just pulled out of history. A little bit, a little that our Lewis Hamilton keeps us straight,” Pitt said during a New York premiere before the general release of this week in theaters. Apple’s senior vice president of Services Eddy Cue, a lifelong Formula One fan and Ferrari board member, told reporters after a media performance that “there is not a single event here … which did not happen in a real race.” Of course, this does not mean that such events can still happen, or that they have served as inspiration. The Apple Original Films Blockbuster – with scenes shot during the Grand Prix weekends – is a salvation story, with Pitt playing the outdated driver Sonny Hayes on an unlikely comeback with a young hotshot in a struggling team. The seven-time world champion Hamilton has given advice and is credited as a co-producer about a film that is not familiar with the sport for the audiences. Pitt’s age – 61 in real life – was called in the modern era as unrealistic for a driver, but as Hamilton, 40, said when filming began in 2023: “Brad looks like he is aging backwards.” The oldest current F1 driver is Spaniard Fernando Alonso who will be 44 next month, but in the 1950s, when physical demands were less but dangers were greater, Philippe Etancelin and Louis Chiron at 55. Luigi Fagioli was a winner at 53. The Dutch manager, Jan Lammers, chased from 1979-82 and was out for more than a decade he won Le Mans and chased Daytona before returning in 1992. Italian Luca Badoer also had ten years between racing ahead of a short -lived comeback in 2009. Last indeed lasted from the last to the first time, and did not make desired strategies and took triumphs with unnoticed. contenders. The Canadian Grand Prix in 2011 lasted more than four hours, with six deployments in the safety car and was won by Jenson Button who was at one point in the back of the field and had two clashes, including one with McLaren teammate Hamilton. Button made five pit stops, plus a walk -through penalty, and a puncture in a race picked up for two hours. Hayes’ back story is so violent from Ayrton Senna, before he had an accident that he was thrown out of the car still tied to his seat. It was modeled on the Northern Ireland’s Martin Donnelly, who crashed in Jerez in the Spanish Grand Prix in 1990 and was left in the middle of the track. He survived miraculously, but there had to be no F1 return. Drivers escaped from burning accidents, Frenchman Romain Grosjean after his car broke out in a fireball in the Grand Prix in 2020, while Niki Lauda sustained serious burns in a 1976 Nuerburgring crash. The Austrian returned to races six weeks later. There was nod to the Crashgate scandal, when Brazilian Nelson Piquet Jr. deliberately crashed in the Grand Prix in Singapore in 2008 and caused a safety car that helped win teammate Alonso. A female technical director? Not yet, but women have run teams and work as strategists, renal engineers and pitlane mechanics – although the film is far from realistic in this regard. For F1 fans of a certain age, there is the ‘Easter egg’ of a look at the Monza Banking in Homage to 1966 film ‘Grand Prix’. F1 director Joseph Kosinski said that Classic, and Steve McQueen’s film ‘Le Mans’ of 1971, were his touchstones. “Those films are now almost 60 years old, but you can still watch them and still marvel at the film and the feeling of being there,” he said. “The whole practical nature of this film was inspired by that classic”. (Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Toby Davis)