All Your F1 Questions Answered, Ahead of 'F1 The Movie'

Time​ Magazine

13 hours ago

F1 The Movie, which is out in U.S. theaters and IMAX on Friday, has summer blockbuster potential, given the huge budget—north of $200 million—and star power—Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, cameos by Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen and other Formula 1 drivers—involved. So if you're an F1 newbie looking to spend a few entertaining hours in an air-conditioned theater, or you've seen the film but don't totally understand all those terms about tires and safety cars and DRS, we've got you covered. Below, some of your questions, answered. (With an assist from Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff, an executive producer on the film who also makes an appearance in the movie).
It's a movie, people. And while Pitt is indeed a 61-year-old actor, we never find out the age of his character, Sonny Hayes, the journeyman washout whose promising F1 career was derailed by a horrific accident at a race in Barcelona in 1993. Pitt could be portraying a younger man. 'I don't think Sonny is 61,' says Wolff.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, Hayes was an 18-year-old rising star at that race in Barcelona. That would put him at about 50 in the movie. Middle-aged drivers were more common in olden times: Luigi Fagioli, at 53, is the oldest F1 driver to win a race; he shared the 1951 French Grand Prix title with another driver. Fernando Alonso is the oldest driver on the current grid: the two-time world champion, who currently drives for Aston Martin, turns 44 at the end of July. But Alonso hasn't won a race since 2013.
Hayes still has driving talent: at the beginning of the film, we see him help his team win the 24-hour endurance race at Daytona. Transitioning to F1 soon thereafter is a bit of a stretch, but not, according to Wolff, utterly impossible. 'Racing cars is like learning to ride a bicycle,' says Wolff. 'You don't unlearn that.'
It's a term that pops up in the film, and in actual races: DRS, or Drag Reduction System. During F1 races, at designated areas of the track—particularly on straigtaways—drivers can can open up a flap on the car's rear wing to reduce aerodynamic drag, and overtake opponents. A car must be within one second of the racer it's trying to catch in order to use DRS.
Grip, Wolff explains, 'is a tire sticking to the ground. The more sticking to the ground you have, the quicker you go through a corner.' Simple enough. 'Here comes the caveat,' Wolff says. 'Going beyond that limit of sticking, or sliding, creates overheating of the tire. So what you want to achieve is actually the optimum grip, the optimum sticking to the ground without it giving up and sliding.'
Tires for dry race conditions—the slick tires—come in three classifications: soft tires offer the most grip but last the shortest period of time before degrading, so they're ideal for qualifying runs, or when a driver needs a burst of speed. Hard tires last longer—saving pit stops—but have less grip, and result in slower lap times. Medium tires split the difference between the two.
In damp conditions, teams employ intermediate tires, which are grooved to allow drivers to navigate tracks with no standing water, or drying surfaces. The deeper grooves of the wet tires can disperse more water and are best for the rainiest days.
Each of the 10 Formula 1 teams consist of two drivers, who are all fighting for two championships in every race: the Constructor's title, in which the combined performance of both drivers helps the team assemble points and trophies, and the Driver's title, in which a single driver is designated as world champion. Racers often put more stake in the individual title, which builds their legacies and brands. So while they're supposed to be working together on the track, they often want to beat each other to the checkered flag.
F1's tension revolves around the aging Hayes and his teammate on the fictional APXGP race team, Damson Idris' Joshua Pearce, a young talent from Great Britain. Drivers at loggerheads is quite common in F1. 'Tension is always existing, which you've just got to accept,' says Wolff. 'That's how it is.'
Wolff would know: as Mercedes boss, he had to manage the competition between Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time F1 champion, and Nico Rosberg, who won the 2016 title over Hamilton before retiring. There was hostility between the duo, especially after Rosberg used an engine mode banned by the team to gain an advantage over Hamilton during the 2014 Bahrain Grand Prix. Hamilton returned the favor in Barcelona a month later.
Drivers are calibrated to win at all costs. 'You can't expect the lion in the car and the puppy outside,' says Wolff. 'They drive with the knife between the teeth. It's the team's principal's role to say, 'no more.' And that's what we did.'' Mercedes drivers won every title between 2014-2020 (Hamilton in 2014, 2015, 2017-2020, Rosberg in 2016), and eight straight Constructor's championships from 2014-2021.
In F1, APXGP technical director Kate McKenna, played by Oscar nominee Kerry Condon, tweaks the car design: the fix helps boost the team's results. Yes, this actually happens in the real Formula 1. While a set of strict technical regulations guides the makeup of an F1 car, teams can come up with innovations within these rules to give themselves an edge. Before the 2020 season, for example, Mercedes made a change to the steering column: its drivers could push and pull the wheel to change the alignment of the tires. The steering advantage was so effective, it was banned the next season and beyond.
On-track accidents and dust-ups slow down the race. For less serious incidents, officials send out a 'virtual safety car'—no physical car is deployed onto the track, but cars must reduce their speed by 30-40% of the normal racing pace. So the gap between racers remains the same before the restart.
For the more severe crashes, which require more time to remove debris from the track, an actual car—the safety car—enters the track. Cars file behind the safety vehicle: while drivers can't overtake one another on the track while a safety car is deployed, they can bunch up closer. So a driver who was way behind the leader, or the car in front of him, can effectively erase such a deficit. 'It kind of resets the race,' says Wolff.
Which all begs the question: could one F1 teammate crash on purpose to give another an advantage? This is unlikely to happen for several reasons. First, a driver risks injury or worse in a crash. And second, a 2008 incident in Singapore, in which Renault driver Nelson Piquet Jr. said he was asked by his team to deliberately crash to allow his teammate, Alonso, to gain position during the safety car period as other cars made pit stops for gas, led to an embarrassing scandal. Alonso won the race. But the resulting 'Crashgate' fallout resulted in bans for Renault team leaders. Renault was threatened with disqualification from F1.
The risk just isn't worth it.
According to a 2025 study that appeared in the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, 264 total injuries and 43 deaths were reported in F1-related events between 1950 and 2023. The analysis included 865 F1 drivers. While a 5% death rate for F1 drivers seems frighteningly high, there's a crucial caveat: a majority of the fatalities took place in the '50s, '60s, and '70s. No F1 driver has died in the 2020s. 'The evolution of safety regulations in F1,' the study concludes, 'appears to have successfully reduced total injuries, total deaths, and most injury classifications.'
No, since each track, or circuit, has different designs and laps lengths. F1 races must cover a minimum of 305 km (or about 190 miles). Each race is about that length: but while the Belgian Grand Prix, for example, requires just 44 laps to reach that distance on the long track at Spa, the shorter circuit in the Netherlands requires 72 laps.
One exception to this rule is the street circuit in Monaco: that race covers just 260 km (162 miles). Due to the narrow roads and sharp turns on the Monaco track, lap times are slower, so the distance is shorter to allow it to be finished within F1's two-hour time limit for races. (A race can take up to three hours in the event of suspensions due to bad weather; most are done in about 90 minutes).
The feedback seems to be positive from the actual F1 drivers; they saw it at a screening before the Monaco Grand Prix in May. In the audience was Kimi Antonelli, the 18-year-old Mercedes rookie driver who finished his final high school exams right after earning his first podium with a third-place showing in Montreal in June. Perhaps not surprisingly, what stood out to Antonelli was the 2 hour, 36 minute run time. 'It's freaking long,' he said afterwards.