“F1” movie director reveals how he recreated Romain Grosjean’s horror crash

‘It’s always better to overachieve than underachieve.’ That’s what F1: The Movie director Joseph Kosinski told his special effects supervisor Keith Dawson as they attempted one of the largest stunts of the production. Taking inspiration from a number of real Formula 1 moments, the stunt was successfully featured in the film that has grossed  $609million worldwide so far since its release.

Requiring months of preparation, the dramatic crash scene involved Damson Idris’s character, Joshua Pearce, in a high-speed crash. The car would be seen flying over the guardrails of Monza and bursting into flames as it hit the ground. 

Filming at the British circuit Brands Hatch, Kosinski discussed what he expected from the authenticity of the film, via a video shared on the Warner Brothers’ YouTube channel.

“We are at Brands Hatch. We’re doubling this corner for Monza. Shooting an accident scene for our rookie Joshua Pearce,” Kosinski explained. “We’ve been rehearsing and testing for months. There’s a lot going on when we’re shooting these scenes. The authenticity of it was something that was very important to me that we actually get it right.

“The plan was that the car was supposed to kind of come through the Rolex sign, crash against the fence, land on the tyres. We had done a lot of testing kind of dialing that in perfectly,” Kosinski noted. However, the addition of heavy cameras led to a different result. 

Dawson detailed the challenge. “We talked about replicating the [Alex] Peroni crash and we aim to launch the car 60 to 70 metres to land on the tyre wall into the fence area. This is a high pressurised ram which we charge with nitrogen. We’ve got a metal slug which fires down a line. Our goal is to get the car to the launch point, which is our pipe ramp to 120mph.”

It’s safe to say the sequence exceeded expectations after the initial test fell short. 

Damson Idris at the World Premiere of F1 The Movie

Photo by: Getty Images

“I asked Keith after the first take to crank the pressure up on the launch ’cause I told him it was always better to overachieve than underachieve,” Kosinski smiled. “We launched the car we think over 100 metres over the set into the trees.

“One of the great things about live-action filmmaking is sometimes things don’t go exactly as you planned but in those moments sometimes you get more than what you hope for and boy did we overachieve.”

The next segment of the film sees Brad Pitt’s character Sonny Hayes run to the wrecked vehicle as it bursts into flames after hitting the ground, mimicking one of F1’s most harrowing incidents. Supervising stunt coordinator Gary Powell confirmed: “The [Romain] Grosjean crash, unfortunate for him, but glad he got out of it was obviously the inspiration behind this.” 

Idris prepared for the sequence by consulting the former Haas F1 driver himself. 

“Had an amazing intimate conversation with Grosjean who had been through a similar crash and he walked me through everything that was going in his mind when he was in a car during that moment,” Idris shared. “Everyone in this world has been so supportive to us every step of the way and we wouldn’t be able to do it without them.”