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The Art of Speed & Movies

By joey lopez phd

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Let’s get this out of the way.  Yes I saw the F1 Movie.  Yes it was a blockbuster film and one for the books.  That said, it left me feeling empty.  The kinda empty you feel when things should have been perfect but just miss the mark and not because it wasn’t great, but because it had big shoes to fill.  

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I feel the F1 Movie was “safe” because it’s core audience was a mass audience.  And so I understand why it was made the way it was.  A safe story, safe shots (granted extreme high adrenaline), but if you know the history of racing films, you know there is a lot of room for making beautiful films about racing.

So off the bat, let’s list some films I will be discussing, I will include a link to the trailer of each one).

NOTE: I forgot to include Gran Turismo (2023), I will add it soon.

Here are the movie posters. I obtained them through IMDB.

These are but a few of the racing films produced over the decades.  I know I forgot many.  Read to the end to see my list of automotive culture films.

For those who do not know, I did my Ph.D. dissertation about automotive culture (2007-2010), I studied street racing, road racing, drag racing and high end automotive performance shops in Central Texas.  I also built a Turbo Mercury Grand Marquis during that time performing embedded participatory ethnography.  I have since gone on to study automotive youtube culture, SEMA culture and automotive culture in general.  I produce videos, blogs (like this) and mentor others to do so as well.

So let’s have some fun, and have a chart now:

Post Chart Breakdown

So I was surprised by the ratings.  I have to say my categories may seem trivial but they were very intentional.  For example, driver hotness may seem arbitrary, but you will note, throughout all the films, good looking lead characters play a role, even in Senna the documentary, it is focused on.  So let’s talk about them:

Automotive Racing Visuals/Cinematography – As an official media professor and also a media producer myself, I value automotive cinematography. With this list of racing movies, what you will find is that Grand Prix & Le Man’s set the bar in my opinion.These two movies created an aesthetic that to this day is still hard to pull off because they are simply beautiful films in the way which they fall on your eyes.  These movies were made before CGI and digital filmmaking, 50 to 60 years ago.    They were made in a time where seminal films that feature amazing cinematography were made, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Lawrence of Arabia & Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (Yes a French musical).  These films contain an artistic quasi cinema vérité, expressing the culture, the spirit and cheesy as it is, grit of racing.  As we move from these two seminal films, you see where Days of Thunder and Talladega Nights:  The Ballad of Ricky Bobby use the basics of automotive cinematography and the high adrenaline Hollywood action cinematography to create an intense visual experience that sacrifices the artistic cinematography for what I would call “thrills.”  Senna is a total odd ball in that it uses archival footage to tell the story and I have to say, it is definitely cinema verite.  The ability to build off of the original footage is raw and impactful.  From the race track itself to the drivers meetings to karting videos, the footage adds so much rather than having re-enactments.  For me Rush and Ford vs. Ferrari have similar styles of visuals/cinematography.  They employ the 21st century way of visual storytelling with full on digital compositing, green screen and digital cinema “grit,” where the viewer is drawn into the moment with hyper “real” shots.  The shots are edited with Hollywood action style rhythm and pacing, which adds the “more real than real” experience of the visuals/cinematography.  

F1 (2025) takes heavily from the Drive to Survive aesthetic of visuals and cinematography and combines it with Hollywood action film making.  The results are a modern interpretation of quasi cinema vérité.  This hybrid approach definitely gives it a contemporary look and feel in a mass media way.

So which is best???  Who is #1???  Well that’s up to each of us.  I will tell you my top three:  Grand Prix, then Le Man, then Senna.  I feel they offer a “true grit” that more recent films try to accomplish with newer techniques but often fall short of.  Maybe I am too nostalgic? What are yours?

Some of my favorite shots/scenes:

Sound Design – My enthusiasm for sound runs deep.  So deep that I teach it at university, I record automobiles and I also own a HiFi Shop.  To say that sound is part of my life would be an understatement, I live and breathe it.  So when rating these movies I admit to having a big bias towards my own tastes and it was definitely the recent viewing of F1 (2025) that locked those in.  What do I prefer?  Well for automotive films, I want to experience as “true” a sound as possible.  Why is “true” in quotes?  Well I know that recording automobiles is tough and an art.  It is not straight forward and takes so much to have it sound “real.”  Making a car sound “true” to the live experience is very subjective.  A car sounds different inside, outside in the front, outside in the back and outside as it passes by.  And this is one car and racing movies have multiple cars whizzing through the frame.  So what am I personally looking for?  Well like the electric guitar, race cars are LOUD, often beautiful sounding, but LOUD.  They literally pound on your chest when in them or around them.  F1, Le Man and Nascar’s all are tuned to not just be loud, but also those sounds are throughout the frequency range.  It is not just bass, not just a subwoofer pounding away making you “feel the car.”  It is so much more, it is piercing on multiple levels and has a “resting on your ear” that whether you are listening loud or at a moderate volume sounds like a “real race car.”  

That taken into consideration, the sound design of all these movies are unique in and of themselves with again the movie production eras having a big influence.  I will state off the bat that again my favorite sound design has to be Grand Prix, Le Man and Senna.  That said, to me, all of them have great sound design, I think Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) is most representative of 21st century sound design, lending all the elements of big sound, “loud” subwoofer era engine sounds and “radio” dialog that harkens back to Days of Thunder.  

I also have to say that while Hans Zimmer did the soundtrack to F1 (2025), I think that if people went back and heard Grand Prix’s soundtrack and really stopped and just listened it would be apparent how great Grand Prix’s soundtrack is.  For me, in terms of pop soundtracks, I think all the 21st century films knew how to really put era based pop music to work to drive particular moments in their movies.  Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) is a good example when they play AC/DC. 

One of the main reasons I rank Grand Prix so low for Mass Appeal is the inclusion of the overture and intermission with full motif pieces that last 3-5 minutes long, which for 21st century viewers feels like a lifetime.  However Grand Prix orchestral pieces really add to the sound design and show an intentionality that is long gone from mainstream films.  So far I get the feeling I am nostalgic for an older form of automotive racing…

  • Story/Plot – Ahhhh Automotive racing films and story/plots….  I think we could do a sub set of this category in terms of story/plot involving:

  • Racer Vs. Self
  • Racer Vs. Racer
  • Racer Vs. Car
  • Team Vs. Team
  • Racer Vs. Track
  • Racer Vs. Love

These are the basic conflicts for which automotive racing films revolve around.  I will note that it is such an expensive sport, few if any revolve around “selling out,” as that is part of the process, capitalism is celebrated throughout all the films with brand advertisements being an explicit part of the racing films.  As a U.S. racing fan, I admit having a soft spot for certain ads for brands and these movies do add to that.  Heck one is named Ford Vs. Ferrari (2019) (Guess that falls under Team Vs. Team)!  Racer vs. self is reflected in all of the movies with each racer having to deal with their own mortality and loss of control, even when winning.  Racer vs. racer is evident in all the films as well with rivalries built up on personal levels.  Some films, like Grand Prix (1967), Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) & Rush (2013) deal with racer vs. racer in terms of love interests as well.  Seems to make for good automotive movie making and tension.  

Racer vs. car is related to racer vs. track in that we see in many of the films a racer will push their car too much and have a wreck where the car or track “bites them.”  

  • Grand Prix (1967) – Scott Storddord
  • Le Mans (1971) – Daniel Delaney
  • Days of Thunder (1990) –  Cole Trickle and Rowdy Burns
  • Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) – Ricky Bobby
  • Senna (2010) – Senna
  • Rush (2013) – Nikki Lauda
  • Ford Vs Ferrari (2019) – Carol Shelby
  • F1 (2025) – Joshua Pierce 

Tracks:

  • Le Mans (1971) – Le Mans
  • Senna (2010) – Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari
  • Rush (2013) – Nurburgring
  • Ford Vs Ferrari (2019) – Le Mans

Of course team vs team is evidently throughout all the films as in addition to racer vs racer, there is direct team rivalries, though I will note often teams are used to build tension, but also find resolution through looking past their direct competition, this is often accomplished when racers switch teams or create their own.  In Days of Thunder (1990), Cole and Rowdy have a big rivalry that ends coming to a rupture, much like in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) where rival racers and teams help each other out.  In F1, the movie revolves heavily around racer vs self and racer vs racer with a generational tension that I feel is a narrative troupe employed in many action and sports films made in Hollywood.  It honestly reminded me a lot of the Disney Cars movie plots all mashed into one (1,2 & 3).  Take that for what you will, but I will leave it at that.

Accuracy – You might think I will have major gripes about certain movies, but honestly, I feel the films in this list all work very hard to have a pretty good level of accuracy, even Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), which while satirical, is grounded in the actual culture of NASCAR and if you have seen the Earnhart documentary (Maybe I should have included that too?), you will see how much it relates to both Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) and Days of Thunder.  Grand Prix (1966) and Le Man (1971), Senna (2010) and F1 (2025) all incorporate actual racing footage to put the movie goer into the race.  Each one has it’s own aesthetic and ways of creating “accuracy,” with many using commentators to explain the rules and reasoning for various things happening in the film, such as issues with the cars, racers and tracks.  Rush and Ford vs. Ferrari also employ commentators to address the accuracies of the cars, racers and tracks, but do not use actual racing footage.  From what I could find Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) was shot in North Carolina and at NASCAR tracks, I could not clarify whether they used actual NASCAR race footage, nor could I confirm this for Days of Thunder (1990), however it too like Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) used actual NASCAR race cars for their shoots.  While like all movies documentary or fiction, liberties are taken and I think Rush and Ford Vs. Ferrari are the most artistically fictionalized as they focus on the characters themselves whom are real people and because there must be moments combined to make the story flow, it has the finest line of that feeling where purist might feel it simplifies issues or problems faced where as causal movie goers might watch right past it.  

Fun Factor – While I personally feel all these movies are fun, I will say Grand Prix (1966) and Le Man (1971) to me have the least fun factor due to their overall artistic automotive aesthetic.  I would then say Senna does not have a huge fun factor as it deals directly with the death of Senna, much like how Grand Prix (1966) and Le Man (1971) deal with critical injury and death.  Days of Thunder (1990), Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), Rush (2013), Ford vs. Ferrari (2019) and F1 (2025) all have high fun factors with music and loud sounds pumping their racing scenes along and high energy character interactions off the track.  While I think the fun factor of films adds to mass acceptance, in the case of automotive racing films, I do not think it is necessary to be a stellar film.

Mass Appeal/Racing Fan Appeal – Automotive racing films, especially with the recent releases might seem like they go hand in hand, however I would argue that Grand Prix (1966), Le Man (1971) and Senna (2010) did not have a mass appeal as much an appeal to hardcore racing fans and film makers.  To this day, I frequently run into automotive enthusiasts who have never seen these movies.  Most have heard of them, but many just have not seen them.  Part of me writing this article is to get others to see these three films, to further understand the other films made in this list.

Hot Drivers Appeal – Ok, so I added this one to be funny, but in reality, it definitely is a constant theme in both real racing and fictional films themselves.  I think Rush (2013) and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) really exemplify and focus on driver hotness and play with it throughout the film, Nikki Lauda (Rush 2019) & Ricky Bobby (Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)) being the grunt of the insults.  I thought of this category as everyone kept mentioning how good Brad Pitt looked in F1 (2025) and how even in the movie the mom of Joshua, Bernadette, makes a comment about Brad Pitt’s looks.  All of the films in this article focus on Hot Drivers Appeal as a focal point, it isn’t just their looks, it’s their attitude and the “grit” they represent throughout the movies.  I find it very interesting as an overtone in terms of how racing films capitalize on “hot” stars to build interest in their films and employ sex and sexualization of both the male and female characters to add to the “hype” of racing culture.  It would be interesting to write a whole article just on this topic.

Conclusion

This article isn’t meant to be a definitive one, the list has room to grow and the categories have room to expand as well as have more depth added to them.  Instead this is more of a “think piece,” that tips off the exploration of this genre of filmmaking.  It is meant to draw more questions than answers, to hopefully spur more articles looking at the various ideas brought up.  I really enjoyed doing this piece and it does beg for some other automotive genre films to be explored, here are just a few off the top of my head, the lists could go into the tens if not hundreds.

Animated Films/Shows

  • Initial D Show & Movie (1990’s – 2000’s)
  • Fast & Furious Spy Racers (2019)
  • Disney Cars Franchise (2006 – 2017)

Car Culture Live Action Films

  • Bullit (1968)
  • Two Lane Blacktop (1971)
  • American Graffiti (1973)
  • Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)
  • Smokey and the Bandit (1977)
  • Cannonball Run (1981)
  • Ronin (1998)
  • Gone in 60 Seconds (2000)
  • Fast & Furious Franchise (2001 – Present)
  • The list goes on and on

Another area I would like to explore at some point is amatuer automotive racing and street culture film making and the techniques used to create them.  But that’s for another day.  I hope you all enjoyed this blog, if so drop me a link and let me know what I should cover next.  contact@mygeekylife.com