TV & Beyond on 2025-06-28 23:45:00

“F1” is a fun movie. It’s bombastic, exciting, and incredibly well shot when it comes to the highly technical racing sequences. If you’re a fan of Formula 1, or of motorsport in general, you’ll likely find something to love in the film, which is essentially a two and a half hour love letter to the spirit of racing.

It’s also, in many ways, extremely implausible.

Yes, that’s the burden of most sports films — pulling an unlikely fiction out of a world full of drama that’s far more interesting when it’s real. You’re always going to have to contend to some degree with the “Rocky could never go toe-to-toe with Apollo” kinds of soft plot holes, which we all agree to look past in the interest of having a good time. “F1” is littered with those moments, from the advanced age and downright maniacal driving style of Brad Pitt’s Sonny Hayes to the ceaseless cascade of happenstance that allows a lousy F1 team to gain positions over the likes of Red Bull, Mercedes, and Ferrari.

Again, we look past it all. It’s a thrill ride, and that’s all it needs to be. But there’s one particular thing about “F1” that I can’t fully look past — an omission that, as a fan of the sport, feels particularly egregious. I’m talking about qualifying, a key part of every F1 race weekend that’s never shown here and is only mentioned a single time in the whole movie. Here’s why that’s a big problem.

F1 ignores a crucial component of the real sport

Formula 1 cars racing down a straightaway while fans cheer in the stands in F1

Apple Original Films

Every Formula 1 race begins with practice runs for each team on the track, followed by qualifying, and then the actual race. Qualifying is conducted in three phases, with the slowest times in each being eliminated and relegated to bottom starting positions on the grid, until eventually the final phase determines the order of the top racers and which driver gets “pole position” — the first spot on the grid. It’s a hugely important piece of the race because passing in F1 is incredibly difficult, so your starting position, in many cases, will largely determine where you’re able to finish.

In the movie, Sonny Hayes’ first race for APXGP at Silverstone is treated like his grand return to the sport by the commentators. He even pulls a gambit where he pretends not to know how to start the car at the beginning, in order to get his tires warm while catching up. All of this happens with no acknowledgement of the fact that he would have already done a full day of qualifying the day before. Unfortunately, it makes no sense.

The dismissal of qualifying in the film also creates some logical issues related to the actual APXGP car. Sonny insists that it be redesigned “for combat,” as they’re never going to be able to compete with the bigger teams in terms of pure racing speed. The problem, of course, is that a “combat” car wouldn’t help you at all in qualifying, where racers are only competing with the clock. Any adjustments made to the car along his requests would have likely also made it worse for qualifying, largely undoing any benefit in the actual races.

F1 doesn’t make a lot of sense, but that’s okay

Sunny and JP staring at each other in their APXGP uniforms in F1

Apple Original Films

The one time “F1” actually acknowledges qualifying is during the climax race in Abu Dhabi, where a last-second red flag gives APXGP the chance to get fresh tires on their cars — tires the other teams don’t have because they used them in qualifying the day before. It’s a clever bit of narrative trickery to help justify a midfield team getting a genuine shot at Lewis Hamilton, but the selective inclusion of qualifying only makes its absence in the rest of the film more glaring.

All that said, is it a big deal? No, of course not. This is Hollywood, and this is just a fun racing movie. There are tons of incredible documentaries and biopics on the history of motorsport out there if you want real accuracy. Or, you know, you could watch the actual races! “F1” is meant to be a fun romp that shows love to the sport but also brings in a wider audience, hitting all the same narrative beats as “Rocky Balboa” or “The Natural.” And in that pursuit, it’s largely successful, even if a lot of the actual plotting doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

TV & Beyond on 2025-06-28 23:45:00

F1 ignores a crucial component of the real sport

F1 doesn’t make a lot of sense, but that’s okay

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