How Realistic Brad Pitt's F1 Movie Was, According To Real F1 Drivers

Brad Pitt's "F1" has gotten strong reviews and opened to an impressive start at the box office, but naturally, that success doesn't mean that the film is entirely accurate to real Formula 1 racing. Sure, director Joseph Kosinski has pulled off some of the most technically impressive and aesthetically on-point racing scenes ever filmed in the genre, and those set pieces are the absolute highlights of the movie. But the actual racing within those sequences, as well as the larger story, don't always make a ton of sense.

It's all in good fun, of course, and when was the last time a fictional sports movie actually 100% lined up with the sport in question? There is no qualifying in "F1." There are moves that make no sense in "F1." But don't just take my word for it — take it from the actual drivers who do the job.

"For the hardcore fan and for journalists, we will see things that might be a bit too American or a bit too Hollywood," Williams driver Carlos Sainz told Motorsport after an early screening of the film attended by current F1 drivers. "But honestly I enjoyed the whole film." That sentiment — that plenty of things may not have been fully accurate, but that the film as a whole was fun and good for the sport — was shared by most drivers on the grid. "We are looking at it as Formula 1 drivers and we always try and see all the small details that are not exactly [accurate]," Ferrari's Charles Leclerc said, "but it's just very Hollywood-like and I think that's really cool because it's not for F1 drivers, it's for a broader audience."

Everyone racing on the Formula 1 grid seems to understand that any Hollywood movie based on their sport is going to take some creative liberties. However, the interest in exposing F1 to a larger audience, and the spirit of paying tribute to the sport, seem to be more important in the eyes of the drivers.

"I think some of the core values of the movie, between the dynamic between the teammates, are very well portrayed," Alpine racer Pierre Gasly told Men's Health. Isack Hadjar of the Racing Bulls team was somewhat less positive coming out of his screening when speaking with Motorsport. "It's hard to give feedback as drivers because we're really critical," he said, "but if you're a kid or someone who doesn't know about the sport, I think it's the best way to get started." Many drivers, like Haas F1 Team's Ollie Bearman, praised the technical achievement of filming the race scenes in such an intense and high-speed fashion. "It's going to make people want to watch F1," Bearman told Motorsport, "which is really the goal of it. The onboard shots and the work that they did was actually quite incredible."

Legendary F1 driver Lewis Hamilton earned a producer credit on the film for his consulting work, so not everything depicted in the film is pure fantasy. It's really the more dramatic moments — the crashes, the reckless driving (which would surely be penalized heavily in the real sport), and the underdog comebacks — that stretch the bounds of realism in the film.

"F1" is playing in theaters nationwide.