Why is everyone obsessed with F1? It's more than just Brad Pitt's new movie
Natalia Whitaker appreciates the full menu of American sports, from the NBA to the NHL. Now, she’s added another competitive event to her list of favorites: F1, or Formula 1, largely considered the world's most ferocious and high-tech form of auto racing.
“I went to the Miami Grand Prix recently and, oh my, it was the best weekend ever,” says Whitaker, 25, who works for a wealth management firm in Los Angeles. “The emotion, the speed, the noise – fantastic. But there was so much going on that it would have been fun even without the races.”
Make no mistake, we’re witnessing an F1 invasion on soil long dominated by NASCAR and Indy Car, with the number of U.S. fans jumping 10% year over year in 2024 to 52 million and social media followers up 29%, according to Formula 1 metrics.
Leveraging both legacy and social media, off-track entertainment, and even a buildout of F1 Arcade restaurants to accommodate fans who can’t make it to the races, the mission is to make F1 nothing less than a new American pastime.
The onslaught really revs up June 27, when “F1 The Movie,” the Apple Original Films release starring Brad Pitt, hits theaters and IMAX. The actor, 61, ripped a page from the Tom Cruise script and drove 180 mph for his role as talented-but-peaked racer Sonny Hayes, who accepts a do-or-die comeback challenge from team owner Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) while trying to bond with his unimpressed rookie teammate Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris).
"As a kid, I used to see F1 races on ABC's Wild World Sports, which showed guys like (Scottish world champion) Jackie Stewart and of course we had the great Mario Andretti," Pitt tells Paste BN. "I'm just so excited for the growth of this sport here now. It’s a religion in other countries, in places like Latin America, Europe and Asia. So it’s nice to see us catching up."
F1, a global racing series that debuted 75 years ago in England, is finally getting traction in the United States after decades of starts and stops. Upward of half a million people now typically pack the long-weekend race events in Miami, Austin and Las Vegas, three of 24 such races held around the world.
“We consider each one of our races like its own Super Bowl,” says Stefano Domenicali, who once ran Ferrari’s F1 team and now is CEO of Formula 1. “There are big fan activations on site, music concerts and lots of business being conducted.”
Today's Formula 1 is as much social gathering hub as auto race
This place-to-be-seen vision for F1 is a far cry from decades past, when largely die-hard crowds would show up with tents and ponchos, often braving inclement weather to witness men and their machines duel as they risk life and limb.
Today, attending a F1 event is a bit like going to a high-octane yet remarkably safe gladiatorial event with fabulous champagne. Young, hip crowds take selfies while corporate titans look to ink deals. Call it the ultimate high-visibility networking spot (just don't forget your ear plugs).
“If we stayed focused only on our traditional fans, we wouldn’t be here today,” says Domenicali, whose racing series partnered with Lego to build 10 fully drivable cars – each using nearly 400,000 bricks – that the F1 racers drove during the Miami Grand Prix Driver's Parade. “The big change for us was finding new ways to communicate with a younger generation of fan.”
F1’s potent ammunition for that quest includes leveraging the fan base built by Netflix’s reality series “Formula 1: Drive to Survive,” now in its seventh season chronicling the sport as a soap opera filled with dramatic racing, diva drivers and Machiavellian corporate intrigue.
Helping the hype are fashion plates such as McLaren’s Lando Norris and F1 legend and "F1 The Movie" producer Lewis Hamilton, who readily share their lives with fans via social media. Equally critical is a U.S.-focused master plan from Liberty Media, the Denver-based company that bought F1 for $8 billion in 2017.
“None of this is by chance,” says Domenicali, adding that allowing the producers of “F1 The Movie” to shoot during actual races was complex but critical to showcasing the sport's inherent drama. “All our decisions are coming from a vision for where F1 can go.”
Women make up a surprising number of F1's fans in the U.S.
A big reason for the sport’s growing success in the United States is women, who make up some 40% of F1 fans here, according to F1.
Proof of that all-gender, all-ages appeal is inside F1 Arcade, whose three locations – Washington, D.C., Boston and Philadelphia, with Denver, Las Vegas and Atlanta opening soon – feature high-tech F1 driving simulators complemented by an array of food and drinks.
“Only about 1% of F1 fans will ever get to a race, so the idea is to offer that excitement here,” says Jon Gardner, president of F1 Arcade, which has a licensing deal with the global governing body.
For around $30, you get three six-minute races in which you can pretend to be an F1 driver ripping around a virtual rendition of an actual F1 track. Many patrons opt for more than just a spin in a simulator.
“The glitz of F1 is a huge part of its appeal, whether it’s those legendary races in Monaco or the new ones in the U.S.,” Gardner says. “People order the champagne often when they’re here, they want to experience that glamour.”
The sport may have female fans, but there are no female F1 drivers as yet. There’s a new all-women racing series called F1 Academy aimed at rectifying that shortfall, and the races take place before the F1 events. But more women are finding their ways onto teams in roles ranging from marketing to engineering.
In “F1 The Movie,” Irish actress Kerry Condon plays Kate McKenna, the technical director for Pitt’s fictional F1 team. She says what struck her about hanging out with women in F1 was how normal their presence was.
"Many of the woman I met had been to engineering school, which of course are mostly male places, so for them the F1 world didn't seem that different," says Condon, 42. "I loved how they just got along with everyone, and simply focused on getting the job done. I took a lot from that for my performance."
F1 went from 'look but don't touch' to 'inclusive and engaging'
With its underdog-at-a-crossroads script and unique footage shot during breaks at real F1 races, the “F1” movie hopes to bring even more fans closer to the drama that underpins the impossibly fast driving.
“We’ve gone from being an exclusive sport where the attitude was 'Look but don’t touch,' to being inclusive and engaging,” says Zak Brown, the most high-profile American in F1. He runs the McLaren team, which currently is proving tough to beat despite stellar efforts by Ferrari and Mercedes.
Brown, who rather incredibly funded an early racing career with winnings from a Teen Jeopardy stint, believes F1’s appeal is the intrigue and drama that unfolds when the cars aren't racing.
“It has a very broad field of play, beyond the main event itself,” says Brown, who is a frequent presence on "Drive to Survive" on Netflix. “That field includes how you are developing the car at the factory, the people behind the car and in the cars, their dramas and stories. Our game is played a lot off the track, and that has captured excitement.”
That sort of intrigue powers “F1 The Movie,” which is more about heart and camaraderie than engines and tires. “We went for a very human story about resilience and pursuing greatness,” says Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, which includes film and TV projects.
Cue grew up in Miami adoring F1, but because he couldn’t afford to subscribe to Autoweek, he would spend hours at a local library poring over the magazine's reports. Fast forward, and he now sits on Ferrari’s board and was instrumental in giving veteran Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Joseph Kosinski, the duo behind “Top Gun: Maverick,” a green light for their "Top Gun"-on-wheels movie.
“None of us can fly jets, but we all think we can drive, right?” Cue says with a laugh. “Coming out of this movie, I sense many young people will think, ‘I want to be a race car driver.’ And if you’re old, like me, you’ll just wish you had been one.”
'F1 The Movie' already has a stamp of approval from real F1 racers
How well does “F1 The Movie” conjure up the explosive energy of F1 the sport? One insider reports that real drivers, some of whom appear as themselves in the film, give the movie a thumbs up.
“I’ve spoken with quite a few of them, and they say that while there’s a touch of Hollywood it might be the best racing movie since John Frankenheimer’s ‘Grand Prix’ from 1967,” says Andrew Frankl, F1 editor at Forza magazine, who has spent a half-century covering the sport.
Frankl calls himself “an F1 purist” and isn’t quite sure about the current boom in popularity stateside. “But I guess if things go south with this plan, there will always be the hardcore fans who will turn up,” he says.
That hardcore group likely will have expanded with this massive push into the U.S. market, capturing legions of new aficionados such as L.A.’s Whitaker, who is eager to join friends at the first screenings of “F1 The Movie.”
“With some sports, old fans are bitter about the new ones. But if you find your way to F1, no one cares that you didn’t grow up watching it,” she says. “With F1, I feel we’re all welcome.”