F1 - Apple Movie

F1® The Movie | Main Trailer
Warner Bros.

I never cared much for Formula 1 and this movie did nothing to make me care about it. Near as I can tell it is all about the adulation of the crowds, and I've never cared much for crowds.

The film stars Brad Pitt as Sonny Hayes, a race car driver, and Javier Bardem as Rubén Cervantes, the APXGP team owner. Javier is famous (to me) as the cold-blooded killer sent to recover the missing loot in No Country for Old Men. I don't know if I can list all the Brad Pitt films I have seen, but here's a couple.

Race cars, in my book, are made in some guy's garage and taken to the track on weekends. Formula 1 race cars are made by NASA-like bureaucracies, full of political scheming and arcane rules. I would like to see a race with fewer rules, something like run what you brung, no refueling and no tire changes. If you run out of gas or wear out your tires, that's your own damn fault.

The racing on screen as compared to real-life racing was like boxing in the movies compared to real-life boxing, i.e. very fake. I dunno, maybe that's what non-car people need to see. There were an awful lot crashes. I was curious if that was real, so I asked Google, but all Google can tell me is that there were dozen's of crashes last year. Much of the racing strategy revolved around taking advantage of these crashes. 

One of the best things about motor sports is hearing these high powered, high-revving engines scream as they go flying by. There wasn't any of that in this movie, or at least not enough for me to notice. Still, the film won an Oscar for sound. Weird.

One thing new-to-me is the sparks you see coming from under the cars.

The underside of each F1 car has a wooden skid block with titanium plates attached (Photo: F1.com)

There is a wooden plank along with some titanium blocks bolted to the bottom of F1 cars. The thickness of the plank is measured before and after the race and if the plank has lost more than one millimeter of thickness, the car is disqualified. The titanium blocks are there to insure that the plank does not get worn down. The sparks come from the titanium blocks hitting the track. Nuts, like just about everything else in Formula 1.