“I still don’t know how we got away with it,” says Oscar winner Brad Pitt about how he, alongside producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Joseph Kosinski, made F1 The Movie which Pitt describes as “the most visceral driving experience that’s ever been put on film.”

And what they got away with was putting Pitt and his fellow actor Damson Idris into professional race cars and filming them at top speeds. He said, “The forces in these cars — the high-speed corners — the physics of it all want to rip your head from your shoulders. It’s shocking what these cars can do — and it’s a high unlike any high I’ve ever experienced before. We just couldn’t capture it any other way.”

In F1 The Movie, Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, dubbed “the greatest that never was” and Formula 1’s most promising phenom of the 1990s, until an accident on the track nearly ended his career. 30 years later, he’s a nomadic racer-for-hire when he’s approached by his former teammate Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), owner of a struggling Formula 1 team that is on the verge of collapse. Ruben convinces Sonny to come back to Formula 1 for one last shot at saving the team and being the best in the world. He’ll drive alongside Joshua Pearce (Idris), the team’s hotshot rookie, intent on setting his own pace. But as the engines roar, Sonny’s past catches up with him and he finds that in Formula 1, your teammate is your fiercest competition — and the road to redemption is not something you can travel alone.

Pitt says that the magic of the movie is the way it will appeal equally to longtime fans of the sport and to anyone who’s never even heard of Formula 1. “Threading that needle was the biggest challenge, but I think we’ve done that — made it enlightening enough and understandable for newcomers without dumbing it down for ultra fans. It’s funny, it’s aggressive, it’s driving, and it’s surprisingly heartwarming. I love all these characters. I think this film is so damn entertaining on so many levels.”

“From the beginning, Joe and Jerry talked about how important the authenticity is,” recalls Lewsi Hamilton, F1 driver and the movie’s producer. “Not only for the new fans that we’ll gain from this movie, but for old fans, like myself, who have grown up with it since we were walking. The focus has been to make sure that it is as authentic a racing movie has ever been.”