If after watching the trailer for F1: The Movie, whether it be be at the theater, on a streaming service, or while you’re watching YouTube and you say to yourself, “That movie looks like it’s the Top Gun movie, but on a racetrack,” you wouldn’t be far off in your assessment. If you combine that feeling with other racecar or other inspirational sports movies, you’ll have the formula that makes F1: The Movie. Joseph Kosinski (Only the Brave, Oblivion) directed Top Gun: Maverick, so drawing similarities between the two films isn’t a stretch. Top Gun: Maverick was my favorite movie of 2022. It was a masterclass in storytelling, as well as what you could do with a production budget of $170+ million. That’s what makes it such a shame that F1: The Movie, with a budget exceeding $250 million, felt like nothing more than a retelling of better racing movies, which had smaller budgets, were more original, and offered stories and characters that we genuinely cared about. F1: The Movie felt like a propaganda movie to entice viewers to follow Formula 1 racing.

There wasn’t a moment in F1: The Movie that made me feel like I wasn’t watching a movie. That’s not a good thing. Even the film’s title feels like something you might watch as an introduction if the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the Indy 500, offered pubic tours. The film seems designed to treat all of us like we don’t know anything about Formula 1 racing, but we emerge as experts by the end of the two and a half hours.

Racing films such as Rush, Gran Turismo, Ford v Ferrari, and Days of Thunder have done the genre much better, with far less. Days of Thunder felt similar to F1: The Movie in that it utilized a script and the presence of a prominent Hollywood leading man to carry a movie, with the actor establishing himself as the film’s protagonist and hero. If you haven’t seen an auto racing film before, insert Hoosiers, Remember the Titans, Friday Night Lights,  Miracle, or one of many other (based on actual events) inspirational sports dramas, and you’ll know exactly where the movie is going and how it will end. Even worse, F1: The Movie is not based on a true story. Add to this that for a portion of the 155-minute run-time, you’ll hope for a hook or a twist that will attempt to get you invested, until you realize that this payoff won’t be coming.

The plot is familiar and straightforward. In what feels like a previous life, Sonny (Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Moneyball) was a promising racer until a nasty crash ended his career. Fast forward to the present day, where Sonny freely roams the United States, following newspaper advertisements and flyers of races happening in various towns. He has resisted full-time offers to join racing teams, for reasons known only to him, and an old friend and fellow former racer, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem – No Country for Old Men, Being the Ricardos). He owns the APXGP Formula 1 team and is in danger of losing the team if he doesn’t start performing better in races. Sonny resists Ruben’s offer to join the team as the number two racer, behind his rookie driver Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris – Megan Leavey, The Commuter). Though he rejects the invitation, we know that Ruben wasn’t there for just a chit-chat. Soon enough, Sonny shows up unannounced, ready to work. As this movie wasn’t based on a true story, an unnecessary scene was inserted, allowing us to see how conflicted Sonny was and how he wanted to resist the urge to compete. Unfortunately, neither of these resonated in a film where we never felt connected to any of the characters.

I don’t need to write what comes next. Joshua, the invincible, know-it-all, next big thing rookie, and Sonny, the seasoned, grizzled veteran who came close, but never achieved greatness, begin to clash, forcing Ruben to play mediator, and the other members of the team, including technical director, Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon – The Banshees of Inisherin, Bad Samaritan), team principal Kaspar Smolinski (Kim Bodnia), chief mechanic Dodge Dowda (Abdul Salis). From there, we’ve the typical ups and downs, team dissension, car wrecks, hospital stays, and the ‘Do I’ve what it takes to come back’ mantra that we’ve been fed repeatedly in cookie-cutter sports redemption story films.

I had read that Ptt was miscast as Sonny Hayes, the film’s lead. The reviews I had read said his performance was good, but the role didn’t fit. I’d go even further. His performance stunk. However, that has more to do with the story, script, and the limited situations that Kosinski allowed him to explore, preventing him from revealing any complexities to his character. We first meet Sonny when he participates in the 24 Hours at Daytona. We see a healthy, fit individual with natural charisma making his way towards the track for the next leg of the tour. What feels out of place is when we see that he is living in a van to do said walk.

F1: The Movie uses race commentators, pit crew chiefs, and fellow racecar drivers to introduce us to concepts, techniques, scoring, sequencing, and everything else that we may or may not know about open-wheel racing. It’s a tried-and-true technique that works in the right circumstances. I recently rewatched and reviewed for the first time one of my favorite films, For Love of the Game, which employed similar plot devices to advance the story. While I still adore the film, it hit differently in 2025 than it did in 1999 (and not in a good way). The rewatch reminded me of all the movies I have seen since my initial viewing that used similar techniques to tell a story. It felt tiring on my rewatch. That same formula for a film of F1: The Movie felt cheap and lazy.

The performances were lousy. The characters liked chemistry. The dramatic elements were overblown. The racing wasn’t even great. Each of the other racing movies mentioned in this review was just as good, if not better than, the ones in F1: The Movie.

Plot 5/10
Character Development 5/10
Character Chemistry 6/10
Acting 6/10
Screenplay 6/10
Directing 5/10
Cinematography 9/10
Sound 8/10
Hook and Reel 7.5/10
Universal Relevance 7/10
64.5%

D

Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie

• • Top Gun: Maverick
  • Days of Thunder
  • Gran Turismo
  • Ford v Ferrari
  • Rush