When Brad Pitt and the filming crew for the upcoming F1 movie first descended on the Formula 1 paddock before the 2023 British Grand Prix, the actor had just one critical message for the drivers.

“If we’re ever in the way,” Pitt said, “just tell us to f*ck off!”

Brad Pitt explains F1 movie brief to the drivers

The Formula 1 world is abuzz with some of the first reviews of F1: The Movie, which will hit theaters around the world next week and bring to a close a near four-year cycle of writing, casting, filming, and editing.

The F1 movie stars Brad Pitt as racer Sonny Hayes, a former Formula 1 star who washed out of the sport without a win in the 1990s but who is called back into action by Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), team owner of APXGP.

Why? Well, Cervantes has hired a young prodigy named Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), who has an abundance of natural talent but who needs someone to guide him in refining it. That person will be Sonny Hayes.

Filming for the movie first kicked off in 2023, at the British Grand Prix, and finally culminated at Abu Dhabi in 2024. While Pitt became a regular presence in the paddock during that time, his first encounters with the world of Formula 1 were… a little awkward.

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In an interview with GQ, Pitt admitted that it took him a while to really find his footing as a key player in the F1 paddock — which prompted that early brief to the drivers, that “if we’re ever in the way, just tell us to f*ck off.”

At that point in mid-2023, Pitt and co-star Damson Idris had already put in plenty of time behind the wheel at Le Castellet and various UK-based racing circuits, but nothing could have prepared them for their first experience in the world of F1.

Pitt had given his brief to the drivers in a meeting well before the start of the event, but come Sunday afternoon, he and Idris lined up beside 20 of the world’s finest drivers for the pre-race ceremonies, including the national anthem.

“We got to Silverstone, which, my God, is a glorious track and became like a home for us and then we’re off and running, and we’re ready!” Pitt told GQ.

“We’re on the grid standing next to the actual racers. The telecast is going to cut us out, but our cameras are going to get us all, we’re a part of it. We have this amazing weekend. Everything goes like clockwork. Everything’s sublime.

“Everyone’s on a high adrenaline rush. We pull this thing off! I drove in front of 80,000 people in the stands on that day. I didn’t c*ck up the car, didn’t put it in the wall, didn’t beach it, everything was good!””

And then, five days later, a major strike began, helmed by SAG-AFTRA, which also coincided with a writer’s strike kicked off by the Writers Guild of America. Hollywood was in disarray as the impacts of both COVID-19 and the move to streaming overturned everything that had once made the movie industry successful — and it brought filming of F1: The Movie to a screaming halt.

Pitt told GQ that he was “gutted,” though there was one bright side: He got to spend more time behind the wheel of the modified Formula 2 car used in the film.

It also allowed him to more seamlessly integrate into the world of Formula 1.

“In 2023 I felt like I was in someone else’s court, someone else’s home and just was really humble and kind of shy about it,” Pitt explained.

“I had such reverence for these guys and this sport. But by the next year shooting there, it just felt like it was our own home and we were just so integrated into just the framework of the ecosystem that it was really nice.”

Did any driver take Pitt up on the chance to tell a major actor to “f*ck off”? That, he didn’t divulge — but after several years in the paddock, it’s far more likely that many drivers came to consider the film crew part of the extended Formula 1 family.

F1: The Movie will be released to global audiences on June 25, 2025. It will come to the United States two days later, on June 27.

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