Brad Pitt Blasted For Formula 1 Movie’s Glaring Inaccuracies

There are few bigger stars in Hollywood than Brad Pitt.

But even Pitt, with all his fame and history, can’t outrun the wrath of Formula 1 fans.

The superstar is at Silverstone Circuit in England this weekend to film scenes for his upcoming AppleTV movie, “Apex.” The filming coincides with Formula 1 British Grand Prix and Pitt was behind the wheel of a modified F2 car as part of process.

The film sees Pitt starring as “a veteran F1 driver who comes out of retirement to mentor and compete alongside a rookie driver, played by Snowfall star Damson Idris, against the titans of the sport.”

Apple went to extreme lengths to try to make the movie seem as accurate as possible. The company even sold sponsorships to go on the car.

But there was one glaring problem, and Formula 1 fans wasted no time calling out both Pitt and Apple over it.

Apple tried to recreate an actual Formula 1 pit wall for the movie. To do so requires an inordinate amount of technology and data. In an effort to make the film as real as possible, Apple put up a screen on its pit wall with a number of metrics.

However, many of the metrics made absolutely no sense.

To start, the kinetic energy recovery system (KERS), which provides the electric power to F1’s hybrid engines, showed an output of 40000 megajoules. Or, the output of a small nuclear bomb. Additionally, the car was said to have used 14,314 liters of fuel over one lap. Formula cars use around 75-90 liters of fuel for an entire race.

But that’s just the start. The screen also showed that Pitt’s character was driving at 263 kilometers per minute. That’s 15,780 kilometer per hour or, for those of us in the US, 9,805 miles per hour.

Formula 1 cars are fast. They are not quite that fast.

The film won’t debut until 2024 at the earliest. So there’s plenty of time to fix these things going forward. But it’s not an ideal start.