THE NEED FOR SPEED

How Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Lewis Hamilton, Formula 1, and the team behind Top Gun: Maverick combined powers in an attempt to make the greatest racing movie of all time.

- BY DANIEL RILEY PHOTOGRAPHS BY NATHANIEL GOLDBERG STYLED BY GEORGE CORTINA

THE SET PART I

There's a roar beyond the grandstands—something atavistic, something mean and mad and on the prowl. Those of us standing on the pit wall of Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina Circuit snap our heads expectantly in the direction of the sound, holding our collective breath for a T-Rex to emerge, or for Brad Pitt’s F1 car to come screaming down the start-finish straight.

Whaaaa! There it is, sliding around the track's final turn and onto the stretch. And in three...two...one, Pitt’s car rockets by with the speed and power of a fighter jet, belching flames out of its tail as it thunders through turn one and disappears from view.

Our hair blown back, I hear someone say, “I will never get sick of that sound.”

For those wondering: Yes, Brad Pitt is really driving the car in this movie. In fact, Brad Pitt and Damson Idris really driving the car has become, in some ways, the point of the movie—or at least the emotional nucleus during production.

The stated goal of F1, from the beginning, director Joseph Kosinski tells me, was to try to create “the most authentic, realistic, and grounded racing movie ever made.” To further shrink the miniature IMAX-certified cameras Kosinski and his team developed on Top Gun: Maverick, mount them to the cockpit of the race car, and put an audience in the driver's seat in the greatest racing series on earth. That meant putting its stars in the driver’s seat too. Which is why, since I arrived in Abu Dhabi, every member of the cast and crew has hyped me up for one of these sessions.

There's the roar again beyond the grandstands, then into the low-speed turns beneath the enormous iridescent hotel behind us, scaled like a fish with night-lights, and then—whaaaa!—again, Pitt’s car races down the straight, with such power and pandemonium that it drops the floor out of your guts like the best idea you've ever had in your life.