Plot Snapshot

Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) was once a rising star in Formula 1, until a massive crash ended his career before it could peak. Decades later he’s still behind the wheel, but only to scrape by. Living out of a van, chasing small races, drifting from track to track—his talent still evident, but his life pared down to survival.

At Daytona, after proving he can still run with the best, Sonny is approached by Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), his former teammate now running APXGP, a team on the edge of collapse. Funding is at stake, wins are needed, and Ruben calls Sonny back for his experience.

Sonny is paired with Joshua Pearce, a reckless young rookie who dismisses him as obsolete. What follows is more than a fight to prove Sonny’s relevance: it becomes the struggle to keep a fragile team alive, to teach Pearce how to survive and avoid repeating his own mistakes, and to find meaning in a sport now dominated by media flash and high-tech electronics.

Craft & Execution

Cinematography & Editing

• In-car shots trap the viewer in the cockpit, capturing fragility and volatility.
• Wide-angle shots amplify danger, speed, and exposure.
• Editing builds rhythm without excess, keeping momentum.
• Crashes hit with weight, leaving viewers inside the aftermath.
• Firework-lit racing delivers some of the film’s sharpest images, seamless in execution.

Sound Design

• Engines overpower all, more vibration than sound.
• Silence after crashes lands harder than the noise.

Performances

• Brad Pitt carries understated grit and fatigue, never tipping into melodrama.
• Supporting roles press in on him as points of tension.
• The love story is secondary, subdued, and never disrupts the main arc.

Story & Dialogue

• Dialogue stripped to essentials, as it should be.
• Story rhythm mimics endurance: push, rupture, recovery.
• Always underscored by consequence.

Cultural Context & Themes

At its core, F1 returns to one of cinema’s oldest myths: the lone cowboy called back for one last impossible task. It’s a role audiences know well, yet modern storytelling reshapes it. Today, the cowboy can’t succeed alone—he needs a team, and he has to sacrifice for them. That lesson, of connection over isolation, reflects a shift in what audiences want from their heroes.

The film also feeds a more ancient appetite. The roar of engines and the spectacle of motion recall gladiators and chariot races—our cultural obsession with speed, danger, and endurance staged for a crowd. F1 doesn’t hammer a social message, but it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It draws on the stories that have always thrilled us, reframing them in the theatre of a modern blood sport.

Tobias Menzies’ financier is the villain of our era: a capitalist who sees the sport as nothing more than numbers on a screen. He doesn’t care about the history or the beauty of racing, only the profits it can churn out. That indifference is what makes him dangerous. He embodies the time we’re in, where money decides what lives and what dies, and everything else gets stripped away. Yet in the face of that, it’s integrity, hard work, and the stubborn commitment to each other that break through—proof that the spirit of the sport still belongs to those who race, not those who count the money.