Joshua Pearce almost didn't make it in F1 - this is how the latest sports drama perfected Romain Grosjean's fiery 2020 crash

A still from F1
The film was made on a$200–300 million budget. (Image via Warner Bros.)

In the recently released sports drama film, F1, there's literally a moment where viewers will go from woohoo! to whoa! in seconds. Damson Idris's Joshua Pearson, one of the two leads in the film, gets involved in a fatal, flying, and fiery crash where a human surviving it can only be counted as a miracle. He survives it, nonetheless.

Later, we see Brad Pitt's Sony Hayes in a quick response where, without even losing seconds, he runs toward the burning car and pulls his arrogant teammate out. This is also an emotional moment and a point where the two rivals become friends.

This one moment in the film draws inspiration from three different real-life events that saw the drivers in a deadly encounter with death. But they won. These events include two F1 races and one F3 race involving Alex Peroni, Romain Grosjean, and Niki Lauda. We will now see how this scene was perfected and what happened during these events.


It took two takes to perfect this mind- (and car-) blowing scene in F1

Sonny Hayes is a teammate of Joshua Pearce in the movie. (Image via Warner Bros.)
Sonny Hayes is a teammate of Joshua Pearce in the movie. (Image via Warner Bros.)

Joseph Kosinski, F1's director, only had two takes to pull this one off. He thought that overachieving is better than underachieving, so that's what he and his crew did overachieved. In an interview with GQ Magazine, he said,

"We shot it practically. The first take, it landed 20 feet short. It didn't make it to the tire wall."

For the second take, he said,

"It's better to overachieve than underachieve. Go for it. We shot the car way further than we expected. It was supposed to hit the sign and the fencing. As you saw in the movie, it went over, into the woods, and crashed."

Lastly, it was for one of his camera operators who followed this mid-air trajectory and brought it to life for the film. We will get to see all of it when the movie gets a home release, where Kosinski promised that behind-the-scenes footage will be available with it.


The original events were more fatal

All three drivers survived the crash. (Image via Warner Bros.)
All three drivers survived the crash. (Image via Warner Bros.)

Although it is mainly inspired by two events that involved Romain Grosjean and Alex Peroni during their respective races in 2020 and 2019, Esquire Magazine notes that it also has shades of Niki Lauda's crash in the year 1976.

Niki Lauda's car swerved off the track near a turn and hit the embankment before bursting into flames. This scene was recreated in the 2013 movie Rush, where Daniel Brühl portrayed the character. Ron Howard did pull this one off with accuracy.

The Alex Peroni incident happened at the Monza circuit in 2019. The horrifying thing about this is that it happened a week after another crash where Anthoine Hubert died and Juan Manuel Correa went into a coma. With Peroni, he hit a sausage kerb, which caused the accident and left him with a broken vertebra.

In the following year, Romain Grosjean met with his accident, which would make it his last F1 season. The accident left him with second-degree burns.

If we put Romain's and Alex's crashes together, we will get this jaw-dropping scene from F1.


Also Read: 7 mind-blowing facts about Brad Pitt's F1 that will definitely drop your jaw

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Edited by Priscillah Mueni