When you think of the key players in Formula 1, there’s a good chance your mind turns immediately to the drivers; they’re the most visible element, the ones putting their lives on the line every time they get behind the wheel. But in the sport today, team owners and bosses play a critical, if less visible, role.

Javier Bardem learns team principal ropes for F1 movie

Next week, after four years of production, F1 The Movie will hit theaters around the world. Current and soon-to-be Formula 1 fans will be able to experience the sport through Hollywood’s lens — and to see how the actors involved have interpreted their roles.

One of the more fascinating roles seems to be that of Ruben Cervantes, the team owner of APXGP played by Javier Bardem. It is Cervantes who convinces Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) to come out of retirement and try his hand at F1 again, priming young Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) along the way.

The roles of the team principal and team owner in modern Formula 1 are extremely complex.

They must be magnanimous, fierce, and dedicated, all without being too overbearing and demanding. They must know the ins and outs of the regulations and be prepared to exploit its loopholes with the the articulate vivacity of a litigator. They need to be likable but also completely unafraid to drive the competition mad.

Today, principals and bosses are as fascinating to watch as the drivers — something Bardem wanted to capture in his acting.

More about the F1 movie:

👉 Brad Pitt F1 movie: An insider’s complete guide to the F1 film

👉 Tickets for early premiere screenings of Brad Pitt’s F1 movie set to go on sale

When he joined the cast of F1 The Movie, Javier Bardem admitted to GQ that he really had no interest in the sport of Formula 1 — which would mean he’d have a steep learning curve ahead of him if he wanted to nail the role.

“It’s not that I don’t like it,” he said of F1. “I barely know how to drive! It’s a world that is kind of far from me, and I really learned to respect it.”

To get a sense of the role he devised a curriculum that started with the same piece of media burgeoning fans have begun to consume in order to understand Formula 1: Netflix’s docuseries Drive to Survive. There, he got his first taste of the roles these team bosses play, so that by the time he finally had a chance to meet with heads like Toto Wolff and Christian Horner, he felt like he “had the chance to talk to all these huge movie stars — because they are like movie stars.”

“I had the privilege to sit down with them and hear their stories,” Bardem continued to GQ.

“Hear what they put into the game, what it means to lose, what it means to win. And for me, what was important was to try to see the humanity in them, not only the mastermind and the business guy.”

That humanity is the part that can get lost. As with most managers, team bosses can often seem impervious to the stresses of Formula 1, even if we know they’re not. But without knowing them on a personal level, it can be difficult to wrap our heads around that, particularly when the stakes are so high.

Bardem explained what he was looking for in these conversations by saying, “Do these people that have so much power, so much money, so much control over things lose control? And the answer is, oh yeah, in a big way.

“And that’s the funny part. You see all these people who are so well-dressed losing their shit. They rub their hands and they throw shit to the floor, and they scream and they cry and they laugh.”

That’s exactly the kind of emotion Bardem is looking to bring to the F1 movie — which hits theaters next week (June 25 internationally, June 27 in the United States).

Read next: Max Verstappen skips F1 movie premiere for Spa GT3 test