Will Brad Pitt really race an F1 car for his new movie? Not quite

polygon.com:

Brad Pitt will do a Tom Cruise in his new Formula One movie — which is directed and produced by Top Gun: Maverick’s Joseph Kosinski and Jerry Bruckheimer — by driving a race car for real, on actual race weekends, starting at the 2023 British Grand Prix in July. And it sounds like Tom Cruise is pretty envious about it — the Top Gun star and incorrigible thrillseeker has already offered to do some extra driving if they need him.

But claims that Pitt will drive an actual F1 car for the film are overstated — according to reports, he’ll be behind the wheel of a slower mock-up. And he won’t be competing against other drivers on the track.

Kosinski and Bruckheimer revealed the plan for filming their movie during a panel at the F1 Accelerate Summit in Miami on Thursday, ahead of this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix. Panel host Will Buxton summarized the highlights of their chat on Twitter, and was the one to claim that Pitt would be “driving an F1 car.”

They’ve spent 18 months taking what they learnt on Top Gun Maverick to develop the smallest moveable 6k camera ever designed to take the viewer into the cockpit. A cockpit in which their stars will actually drive. That’s right. Brad Pitt driving an F1 car from Silverstone onwards

Buxton said the film production was “creating an 11th team” for the movie in consultation with the Mercedes F1 team, which has designed and tested the car the film team will use. Filming will take place “on track and on event,” with the stars (Pitt included) in the cockpit driving, captured by compact camera rigs similar to those used to put viewers in the cockpit of fighter planes in Top Gun: Maverick. The actors are already practicing on track and using simulation rigs, while seven-time world champion Lewis