The F1 Movie – F1 fan review

If you stop to think about it, what us humans value the most is a strong story. And ‘strong’ could mean any one or more of; piquing curiosity, exciting the imagination, evoking a range of emotions, giving us food for thought, or making us laugh. A strong story captivates irrespective of the medium – campfire retelling, books, grainy black-and-white television. Technical prowess does not a story make.

So it is sad when on almost every measure of storytelling F1 the movie fails, and certainly when placed in context of its huge resources. The basic plot itself is unoriginal and feeble – the once promising protege returns as an aged, wise, sexy hero to a sceptical team who he wins over. Nothing is unpredictable, and you can make a game of forecasting the next move – I knew when Sonny ‘lost’ the card game that he hadn’t. When he was in the Daytona catching the car in front you knew the engineer was going to object at the pace, and the boss would overrule. When his old injuries were revealed and he was banned from driving you knew he’d be unbanned. Etc etc etc. And any time Sonny suggested something novel, there would be resistance, and eventually Sonny would prevail. His character is also painfully stereotypical – four ex wives, pro gambler, iconoclast loner, one of a kind…except for all the other times this character has been deployed.

The chassis of the story is also not well served by its weak subplots, if you can call some erratic diversions subplots. There is a villain, of sorts, but his motivation and method are not central to the plot and could have been dispensed with entirely, almost as if the writers realised they needed a baddie at the last moment and bolted one on. The technical director, Kate, ends up falling for Sonny, again on an entirely predictable Mills-and-Boone curve of initial disdain to literally hanging on his arm and running breathlessly into his apartment. Why they needed to write that in remains a mystery as it does the story overall no favours and does not serve the cause of women’s equality in F1, and then they compound the error by highlighting the clumsy errors of the sole woman pitcrew. Why? I have no idea.

I’ve seen some people say Sonny tells Kate how to design the car. That’s not correct, what he tells her (not asks) is that they need a car for combat, which is what the car needs to achieve, not how it should be designed. The movie doesn’t really explore this point but I think it would have been worth expanding – make a car capable of working in dirty air, even if it’s compromised for clean air. That could have been a nice angle – there’s 9 remaining races, all of which are likely to be close-follow, so time to switch design. At this point I’ll ask how Kate went from being an aerospace engineer direct to technical director for an F1 team which is an very unlikely career progression. And, why does she double up as strategy chief, when Sonny isn’t overruling from the cockpit?

Then we come to social responsibility. I believe all creators of content have such a responsibility, and one is to not depict male arguments as always involving anger, raised voices, and violence with furniture – this simply normalises such behaviour and then we wonder why young men have such problems with consequent issues for everyone else. To that I would also add the early scene in the Daytona 24 where Sonny is seen holding a spanner for protection. I am honestly disgusted – in pit lane emotions absolutely do run high, everyone who has raced has seen it and more often than not been part of it, so what we need to do is figure out ways to set examples so it doesn’t happen. This is personal, I’ve done my share of calming inflamed tempers and it is not why I go to a track.

So as a story then F1 fails, and it also fails as a role model. Now as a racing movie? Also a fail. Now the cinematography is excellent, superb, world class, and immersive. But opportunities are squandered. A big part of racing over ninety minutes is careful hunting – you follow your opponent, and map out strengths, weaknesses. You might dummy a move here and there. You will be careful not to make mistakes, inexorably close in, tenth by tenth. The movie ignores this crucial aspect of racing which is tailor-made for tension building, and opts instead for the cheap sugar-hit thrills of smash, bang, crash and overtakes. I would have loved to have had some of those in-car sequences capture more of the hunt, and at two-and-a-half hours, plenty of time for it once various extraneous scenes such as the bedroom, villain and others have been cut. And mix in some teamwork while you’re at it, show that F1 is a team sport, not just a vessel for a hero. Teams have analysts back at base crunching data, so how about a bit of a hero-nerd back in the factory to help save the day?

The racing that is shown is unrealistic. Sonny’s tactics involve breaking rules or deliberately causing crashes which is illegal, unsafe, unsporting and would in the real world simply not have worked, including dummying into the pits and swerving out last minute, fooling the others into a pitstop. This is not the example to set, misinforms new followers, and is symptomatic of the movie’s weak writing. Honestly, they should be ashamed, and have hired writers capable of creating an interesting plot without resorting to such poor devices.

The pit wall crew – team principal, race engineer and others – simply exist as a morphous blob of humanity to further bolster Sonny’s heroism. Their collective role is to disagree with whatever he says, often misunderstanding it, be proven wrong, then reluctantly agree as they see the big clever plan all along. Again, not only unrealistic, but poor storytelling. This is the Sonny show, first, last and foremost. There is a contrived press conference featuring two other team principals and aside from some clumsy info-dumping, the only purpose is for the more successful teams to disrespect Apex, creating more them-and-us drama, or so it is hoped.

There are many instances where other storyline devices could have been used, but instead unrealism rules. Sonny returns, jumps in a F1 car for the first time in decades, and gets within a second of the young hotshot…on his first flyer. In fact his return at all is impossible…others have pointed out errors so I won’t use any further space here on those matters.

So should you, the F1 fan, watch the movie? Despite all I’ve written, I would suggest yes, if you can suspend enough belief – it’s fun, simple and entertaining if you don’t think about it. But a classic it is not, and it could have been so much more to truly showcase F1’s complexities, be a little more socially responsible and most of all deliver a compelling storyline not dependent on the last cinematography to hold a viewer’s attention.

An Alternative Plot for F1, The Movie

Apex are a struggling F1 team ten races into a 24-race reason with no points scored. They are the last ‘privateer’ team which can trace its roots back to the ’50s, through to the ’60s when their charismatic chief engineer mysteriously vanished, and the ’70s when one of their drivers was nearly killed in an inferno.

Apex’s owners can no longer fund the team and have no choice but to sell at the end of year. The team needs the promise of cash, but how? The team strategises, even crowdsourcing ideas and expertise from fans, then comes up with a plan.

A new Concorde agreement is being hashed out. Apex gets a Race Win Bonus of $10m thrown into the agreement for all teams that win who haven’t won for the previous decade, helped in the negotiations by fans who are contract experts and lawyers. Apex has to make concessions, but the others agree.

Now Apex just need to win a race….but how?

They decide to focus all their energies on just one race, optimising everything.

The car is redesigned for that track only.

A couple of old, wily drivers are brought back in to help with tactics.

The race drivers themselves are sent to coaching….think Rob Wilson.

They also do a lot of simulator work focused on just the track.

The wily old drivers figure out ways the drivers can work as a team…and come up with a few ideas. But it requires one driver to be the winner, and the other to help. Naturally both drivers want to be the winner…but turns out, there’s a good reason one of them should win and the other should help.

The strategists take some of the new ideas the old drivers thought of, and run scenarios…which include the rest of the grid.

The team takes a grid drop to change parts, and even gear ratios just for this circuit.

Come race weekend and everything is ready – the cars are optimised, the drivers are focused, and the team has its game plan.

Qualifying runs are unusual – the team perfectly executes tows in Q2 and Q1 down the front straight, and somehow, also manages to be in precisely the right position for a tow from a competitor down the back straight. Maybe that sim and strategy work is paying off!

Q3 is more of the same, but one driver crosses the line half a second before Q3 closes, with the other ahead for a tow. The lead driver’s time is good enough for P3…but he runs out of fuel moments after crossing the finish line. That’s not a disqualification, but it does show remarkable precision in fuel management.

Come race day the Apexes are P3 and P10. How will they engineer a win from there? Well, that’s in the film, but some examples. Towards the end the lead driver is in P2, unable to pass for P1. The second driver then starts to take a different line through the sweeper in T3 leading to a big brake zone into T4…despite there being nobody around him to force a change of racing line. Oh and is there a minimum pit lane speed as well as a maximum? Turns out there is! And you’ve heard of undercut, overcut but what about uppercut? And is it possible to add weight to a car after it finishes the race? Well, nothing in the rules says the other car can’t help….

Naturally Apex wins, and everybody’s happy!