The world of auto racing is dangerous and crashes and injuries are common. And yet, when attendees watched an F1 racer collapse on the track in Las Vegas over the weekend, it wasn’t another on-track injury. It was just Brad Pitt’s stuntman.
Brad Pitt's upcoming movie, simply titled F1, places Pitt literally in the driver's seat, and the production has been using actual F1 events as locations during the shoot. Anybody unaware of what was going on was potentially worried, or perhaps confused, to see somebody suited up like a racer, with a camera strapped to their face, seemingly collapsing on the track. The Instagram account for the film, which presents itself as a real F1 team, but is a promotional account for the film, posted the incident.
According to People, Pitt didn't collapse to the ground; his stuntman landed on a crashpad. Much like his previous film, Top Gun: Maverick, director Joseph Kosinski mostly uses Brad Pitt himself, as well as co-star Damson Idris, in their racing scenes. It is really them behind the wheel much of the time. However, it seems that not every scene in the film will be Pitt.
While the F1 movie has been filming for a while, it sounds like the scene shot in Vegas over the weekend is from early in the movie. The story will focus on Pitt, a successful F1 racer who leaves the sport after a significant crash and injury. Years later he’s brought back and attempts a comeback. It looks like the collapse shot here may be the injury that happens at the beginning of the movie.
If anybody there wasn’t aware there was a movie being filmed during their race, the whole situation likely seemed surreal. The new F1 film has been seemingly using near-guerilla tactics when it comes to shooting, as the movie has had to film in tight windows to get the shots they need without disrupting the race itself. As one can imagine this requires everybody to really be on their toes and for everything to go just right.
Actual F1 racing star Lewis Hamilton is a producer of the new film and has also been acting as a sort of technical advisor, so it's not just the locations that will give the movie a feeling of authenticity.
How much more filming, at F1 races or otherwise, is left to do is unclear but it likely isn’t much. F1’s release date is coming up in June 2025 so production will need to wrap pretty soon so that post-production can get started. On the plus side, the fact that the movie’s stars have done a lot of the action themselves likely means there won’t be too much need for CGI work since the movie was handled practically. Still, the editing for all the action will certainly be complex.
