3 hours ago
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Could, should, would F1 the Movie win the best picture Oscar? Well, we have to be realistic here: F1 is currently a massive outsider, at 200-1 along with The Secret Agent, which has no chance either but for very different reasons. It’s not hard to see why: this is a swaggeringly mainstream film, where tech and branding dwarf the human input, with the film itself acting as a front-end battering ram for a sports organisation desperate to break into the promised land of the US auto racing circuit. (I mean it’s right there in the title.) So even the most reactionary, conservative Academy voter is going to find it hard to mark F1 with their tick. So no, I don’t think it could win.
That’s not to say F1 doesn’t have quite a bit going for it. The Oscars, as we know, have historically had a problem with so-called “popular” films; Oppenheimer, in 2024, was the first best picture winner in two decades to finish in the Top 10 box office of the year. Whether or not that is a reflection of Hollywood itself, which since the mid-00s has concentrated its money and marketing into increasingly elaborate FX films to the detriment of drama and performance, is a question expanded on endlessly elsewhere. Suffice to say, F1 is definitely in that league, though not actually Top 10 (14th in the North American list for 2025); its ownership by Apple TV+ may have complicated things, denting its impact as a movie theatre spectacle.
So should it win? It would make a change for something like this to get the top Oscar: a sleek, burnished motion picture artefact that’s as beautifully finished – visually speaking at least – as the tech it is asking us to idolise. And plenty of people do: Formula One claims it has 827 million fans worldwide, with its drive into the Middle East as well as the US appearing to pay off. And it totally benefits from a heavyweight like Brad Pitt in the main role, if only as a sop to the kind of middle-aged petrolhead who form the mainstay of the racing audience. (It’s an interest that seems to bite people at a certain age, witness Steve McQueen in Le Mans; and if anyone has the right to call themselves the modern answer to McQueen, it’s Pitt.)
But still, the car’s the star, and much attention has rightly been given to all the fancy new cameras, remote control and otherwise, that were invented to put the audience, literally, in the driving seat. This is the film’s main weapon, and no doubt the reason why Top Gun Maverick’s Joseph Kosinski was hauled in to direct; F1, no doubt, was pitched as Top Gun in a car, and that’s what they got. In the same way that fly-boy films are designed to give cinemagoers the brief thrill of undertaking some enormously stressful yet presumably exhilarating activity without actually doing any of the boring stuff you’d need to in real life – in F1’s case, spending years clawing your way up through the karting circuit, the less powerful grands prix grades, and so on – or suffering any risk of real-world damage, F1 is all about sensation delivery, and that’s where it succeeds.
Finally though, would it win? All the smart money is elsewhere, and for good reason. If F1 were to win best picture, it would be an upset for the ages. That’s not to say it’s impossible, but Oscar-winning films need some sort of constituency. Sinners’ and One Battle’s are clear, F1’s far less so. Maybe F1 has already won by getting on the nominations list in the first place? If nothing else, Kosinski, Pitt et al can have a fairly relaxed evening, if they show up, knowing the chances of having to make a winners’ speech are remote. But you never know …
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