Who Cares If the F1 Movie Is Inaccurate? It’s “Drive To Survive” At 18,000 RPM.
F1 is absolutely fantastic, in fact I’m rewatching it as I’m putting this article together.
Yes, you’ll spot the cracks if you’re a die-hard fan: Brands Hatch pretending to be somewhere else, the APX GP car actually a dressed-up F2 chassis (for me, the steering wheel gives it away), and a 1990s driver improbably getting another shot at the grid.
Who cares?
Accuracy isn’t the point.
The point is that this film makes Formula 1 feel bigger, louder, and more irresistible than ever.
It’s not a documentary, it’s a hype machine, the logical progression of Drive To Survive. If actual F1 drivers can get through it without nitpicking, so can you.
Especially if you’re watching with someone new to the sport.
Global F1 Fan Survey: New fans are driving Formula 1’s growth
The 2025 Global F1 Fan Survey states that:
74% of new fans are women.
27% of fans are Gen Z, with streaming and social as key entry points.
76% say sponsorship contributes positively; 1 in 3 say they are more likely to buy sponsor products (43% among Gen Z in the crucial US market).
Compare that to the 2023 iteration featuring historical data showing that in 2005, only 9% of respondents (we can consider than a proxy for fandom) were women.
The trajectory is clear, and the F1 movie is designed to accelerate it.
The goal is right there in the name: could the producers have picked anything more on-the-nose than “F1”?
No, and that is exactly the point.
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In less than 500 words.
Why accuracy just doesn’t matter in the F1 movie
None of this depends on whether Brands Hatch was mislabeled or the APX GP steering wheel looked out of place in an F1 car.
That’s trivia.
What matters is:
The F1 movie makes Formula 1 the sport look irresistible
It creates new fans, new sponsors, and new cultural capital
It supports increasing valuations for each and every F1 team, even the backmarkers
Accuracy is for engineers.
Spectacle is for growth, as already demonstrated by Drive to Survive.
Where the F1 movie misses: Safety and diversity
F1 isn’t perfect, and we should address those imperfections upfront because they deal with such important subjects.
One glaring, completely inaccurate fault is the film’s view on safety.
At one point, while Brad Pitt’s Sonny Hayes is discussing a new car design strategy with the team’s technical director, who brings up an objection based on safety, Pitt’s character quips: “Safe? Who said anything about safe?”
Sure, it’s bravado and probably plays well with casual audiences, but the reality is different. Formula 1 safety is one of the sport’s defining achievements; drivers now walk away from crashes that once would have been fatal.
Acknowledging that wouldn’t make the movie dull; it would make it even more dramatic, while also paying respect not only to those who have lost their lives or health to racing, but also to the people who have worked very hard to make motorsport safer.
From a more practical perspective, it might help to allay fears from potential fans that by getting into racing they would be condoning some type of macabre bloodsport.
Representation is another mixed bag.
On the positive side, Lewis Hamilton’s role as producer is obvious, Damson Idris is a sharp casting choice and Abdul Salis brings warmth and humor to the character of head mechanic “Dodge”.
Women are also highly visible in technical and pit-lane roles and compared to Rush, Le Mans, or Ford v Ferrari; that’s progress, especially when you think about the role of women in that roughly mid-century era of motorsport.
Unfortunately, the film doesn’t go far enough, settling only for “representation” rather than full-blown celebration: Idris’s storyline risks veering into “white savior” territory, Kerry Condon’s technical director character is indirectly portrayed as somewhat incapable and placed in an unnecessary romantic storyline, and several female characters are reduced to stereotypes.
Pitt himself carries baggage: some see the movie as part of his ongoing PR rehabilitation after troubling reports about his personal life. Casual moviegoers won’t care, but the cynicism is there any can’t credibly be ignored.
With that out of the way, let’s put our focus back on the positives.
Movies and sports have come a long way; I watched Days of Thunder right after F1 and there are some truly jarring scenes, almost right from the beginning. Some are due to the fact the film came out in 1990, others because they play on associations with NASCAR that many people probably still hold to this day.
Formula 1 (the series) is trying to look like a sport where everyone belongs. The portrayal by F1 (the movie) may not be perfect, but it’s there.
That matters, because the next generation of fans, younger, more diverse, more global, demands it and if a sequel materializes (that appears more likely than not at this point) the moviemaking team would do well to address fully the criticism others besides me have levied towards the original.
F1 shows racing’s depth without condescension
In a clear sign of who F1 was made for, one of the film’s best tricks is how it shows but doesn’t tell. Yes, there is plenty of explanation via the commentators (which would happen on any given, real-life race) but the really clever exposition is far more subtle.
In the opening, Pitt’s character exploits a “tip” at the 24 Hours of Daytona, and later he leans on veteran experience to, counter-intuitively, slow the race down to help APX GP gain track position.
The message is subtle but powerful: Formula 1 can be about raw speed, but due to the highly variable nature of all the factors involved, winning often comes down to intelligence, strategy, and craft.
Even tires make an appearance as a decisive factor. One scene sparked a question on tire strategy from my wife, who normally doesn’t care about rubber compounds!
Even if every technical detail is neither fully explained nor fully accurate, the movie doesn’t need to throw jargon about undercuts or thermal degradation at viewers, it simply needs to get people asking questions.
After all, curiosity today can be the seed of hardcore fandom (and increasing revenues) soon after.
The only other inaccuracy that actually matters: Formula 1 team value and investment hurdles
F1’s completely missed take on safety was shocking, only more so than the other glaring inaccuracy because it involves human life.
If you have passing knowledge of the staggering scale of money in Formula 1, you also have tilted your head in confusion multiple times during the film.
In the movie, APX GP changed hands for $350 million, presumably sometime in the late 2010’s or early 2020’s and this is portrayed as a questionable investment.
Maybe, just maybe, that’s the case, because in 2018 Lawrence Stroll led a consortium to invest $117 million in, and ultimately acquire, the struggling Force India team and turn it into Aston Martin F1.
However, later on in the film Javier Bardem’s character laments that if APX GP keep losing, it will be “worth less than [his] shoes”.
This is preposterous, because today, the number thrown around for buying into an existing F1 squad is closer to $1 billion, and Lawrence Stroll’s investment worked out pretty well because in July 2025, Aston Martin (the F1 team) was valued at $3.2 billion.
Going even further back, Aston Martin can actually trace its roots to Jordan, whose namesake Eddie Jordan started the team on a shoestring, so the trend is clear: F1 teams’ valuations have been increasing over time and seem to have gone exponential in the last few years.
Even backmarkers are billion-dollar properties, because a rising tide lifts all boats, and F1, with all its dramatization and inaccuracy, isn’t merely a tide, but rather the beginning of a tidal wave of cash for Formula 1.
Formula 1 sponsorship power: On-track and on-screen
Tie-ins between movies and brands aren’t new, but this project takes F1 sponsorship to another level:
Expensify and SharkNinja, among other sponsors I could spot, reportedly paid $40 million for exposure as backers of a fictional team
IWC Schaffhausen leveraged its Mercedes partnership (they were apparently APXGP’s engine supplier!) to flood the screen with watches
Tommy Hilfiger didn’t just appear onscreen, the brand launched a real-world capsule collection for the fictional team
The movie’s budget was reportedly around $300 million for production, not including what surely must have been substantial marketing costs.
That is astronomical, absolutely “on-brand” for a movie tied to a sport known for outrageous costs.
But with this level of brand integration, it’s likely a large portion was offset before opening weekend.
Even if the film merely breaks even, it has already succeeded as one of the most valuable commercials in history. Sponsors get cultural visibility. F1 proves that its brand halo is strong enough to drive both Hollywood storytelling and real-world sales.
But apparently, “breaking even” is a target far back in F1’s rearview mirror, because not only is it the highest-grossing original film property of 2025 (no small feat when so many new releases today are sequels to well-established properties), it is also the highest-grossing sports movie of all time, raking in over half a billion dollars (and counting).
For other series such as IndyCar, WEC, WRC, this is the benchmark. With F1 the movie, Formula 1 the series is selling so much more than racing, it’s selling lifestyle and culture at global scale.
F1’s marketing power worked on me
Shortly after watching the movie for the second time, I bought F1 25 for my racing simulator. Granted, the Steam marketplace was running a bit of a sale, but the movie itself, with its sheer enthusiasm, nudged me towards making a purchase which I’d been putting off.
Yes, that’s a personal anecdote and I am only one person, but that’s exactly the point: I am only one person!
I ask everyone who’s seen the movie not only whether they liked it but whether it made them more interested in catching a race. As expected, the answers are not unanimous, but there are absolutely those who will take their viewing experience further.
Anyone who questions the accuracy of F1 is completely missing the point of the film.
This project was not designed to be a documentary, but rather one more step in a marketing scheme that has already been highly successful.
Like Drive to Survive before it, F1 is a masterclass in hype and we have only seen the beginning of its lucrative impacts on the fortunes of the series whose name it bears.
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Main image credit: www.formula1.com