The big Hollywood trap that Brad Pitt’s F1 movie fails to escape

It’s a tale as old as time: Hollywood scoops up a promising film story, and into the mix is thrown a romantic plot line that guarantees audiences understand the sex appeal of our protagonist — and that’s on full display in the latest F1 movie trailer, starring Brad Pitt.

In the midst of a trailer that promises a compelling story arc, Pitt’s character Sonny Hayes appears to be tasked with wooing a woman played by Kerry Condon; unfortunately, it means that F1 will fall into the same Hollywood trap that has distracted from every other fictionalised romance in motorsport films.

Brad Pitt F1 movie: Fictional romance and the role of women in the workplace

When it comes time for Hollywood to craft its latest motorsport movie, one thing is almost certain: The protagonist will be engaged in a romantic affair with one of the key women in the film. That woman is likely one of very few women to play a role, and in almost every case, she’s wooed while actively on the job.

In Grand Prix (1966), the American journalist Louise Frederickson (Eva Marie Saint) is sent to cover the Formula 1 scene only for her to fall in love with the legendary Jean-Pierre Sarti (Yves Montand).

In Days of Thunder (1990), NASCAR Driver Cole Trickle (Tom Cruise) woos a neurosurgeon, Dr. Claire Lewicki (Nicole Kidman), as he recovers from a nasty crash.

Driven (2001) may not be the world’s most accurate motorsport film, but it too features a romance — one between ‘Luc’ Jones (Stacy Edwards), a journalist covering racing for an exposé on why men dominate in racing, and the returning racer Joe Tanto (Sylvester Stallone).

Even the comedy Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) features an eventual romance between Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell) and his assistant Susan (Amy Adams).

One notable exception is Le Mans (1971), though that does feature Michael Delaney (Steve McQueen) falling for the widow of a driver whose death he was involved in.

A brief, fraction-of-a-second flash of a romance in the F1 trailer shows that this film, for all of its innovative cinematography, has fallen into the same exact trap.

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We only know the broadest strokes of the F1 film’s plot, but it goes something like this: Former Formula 1 driver Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) is asked to return to the sport by an F1 team owner (Javier Bardem) who is looking for a mentor for his promising young talent Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris).

Hayes is revealed in this most recent trailer to be a gambler and a ‘never was’ — as in, a man who never won a race in Formula 1, but who was allegedly well regarded enough to earn a return to the sport after stepping back in the aftermath of a nasty crash in the 1990s.

Critically, for the purposes of this story, we’ll be focusing on a momentary flash showing Hayes exchanging a kiss with Kate (Kelly Condon).

When Condon joined the cast in 2023, Deadline reported that she would be playing the role of APXGP’s Technical Director — and indeed, she’s portrayed in team kit in this latest trailer. Right up until she’s kissing Brad Pitt, that is.

Is anyone else yawning? I’m yawning.

While the racing world is full of stories of romances kindled in the workplace — Dan Wheldon marrying his assistant Susie, Mark Webber marrying his former manager Ann Neal — in these Hollywood films, the romance isn’t the point and is in fact often just a tool to further characterise the male protagonist.

This man is so dreamy that he can distract all the women around him who are hard at work and make her fall in love, this trope says.

Perhaps F1 will prove me wrong, and Sonny Hayes’ liaison with his Technical Director will turn into some deeply critical plot point that makes a profound statement, but the film’s trailer hasn’t given any indication that will be the case. Historical precedent, too, suggests that expecting anything more is a fool’s errand.

But on top of the boring nature of Hollywood’s romance trope requiring every action film feature a B-story about sex, F1 also reinforces the harmful stereotype that any woman at the race track should be perceived as a potential love interest.

Formula 1 has long been a male-dominated sport, and for decades, the women in the paddock were largely there to serve as decoration. Thankfully, F1 has continued to evolve, and we’re seeing more and more women hired as journalists, pundits, strategists, technical directors, and beyond.

The issue with films like F1 is that they reinforce the idea that women are still decoration — that they aren’t in the paddock to do a job, so much as they are there to entertain the men around them.

This delegitimises the progress that has been made and opens up the potential for thorny interpersonal conflicts that can bloom. When men in the paddock levy unwanted romantic or sexual attention on their female colleagues because there is a cultural sentiment that women are only there to service male desire, it sets the sport, indeed all of sport, back.

F1 was never going to be a 100% accurate picture of Formula 1, creative licence is allowed, but it could have been a compelling one. Unfortunately, it seems we’ll instead be treated to another ham-fisted romance plot.

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