The F1® movie has never felt the touch of a woman

And it shows. For a racing film, it’s fine. But for a movie that was undoubtedly going to be viewed by millions of women? I’m sure I’m not the only one who left the theater disappointed, but not surprised.

Formula Femme, August 14, 2025

Earlier this summer, modern Formula 1 finally made it to the big screen in F1® (the movie). Many fans, such as myself, found themselves flocking to the theatres to watch Brad Pitt and Damson Idris throw F1 cars around the track like they were kiddie toys. From cameos of drivers on the grid to intense on-board camera views, the movie captured the racing extremely well. However, the rest of the movie has one major critique, and that brought the whole film down for me.

The plot of F1® was around what you would expect. It follows Sonny Hayes, an ex-F1 middle aged racing driver who travels across the US to race in different motorsport series. He gets recruited by an old friend to travel back to the high-class high-stakes world of Formula 1 in order to try and save the fictional 11th team, APX GP. The movie then follows his strategies across the second half of the season as he toes the edge of what’s legal in an attempt to give his rookie teammate positions in the race and make the team look good. And by toe the edge, I mean step straight past it. 

However unrealistic it might be racing-wise, F1® does continue one Formula 1 trend quite well, and that’s the poor representation of women. Formula 1 as a sport has a history of being closed off to women, both on the racing and engineering side. However, the number of women has been steadily increasing. They fill jobs in the factories, working as engineers and strategists. On race day, they can be on the pitlane as reporters, photographers, and commentators. In fact, this season the first female race engineer was hired, Laura Mueller, who works with Esteban Ocon at Haas. Yet, because most of the core teams that travel from race to race are composed of almost only men, the average female viewer won’t see much of herself represented on the broadcast. 

For those who have seen the movie, you will know that there are only 2 named female characters who have somewhat significant parts and lines (and, if you’re wondering, no, F1® does not pass the Bechdel test). The first is Kate Mckenna. She is the technical director of APX GP in F1®, which makes her the first and only female technical director in Formula 1. However, the car in the movie is bad. It’s a backmarker. That’s why Sonny Hayes is there, to try and use his talents to push the car. However, there’s a scene early in the movie where Sonny meets with Kate to tell her how to build the car. And, of course, when she follows Sonny’s advice, the car gets better, ultimately undermining whatever talents she supposedly has according to the film. Furthermore, as the movie progresses, it becomes clear that Kate’s role in the movie is to be a love interest for Sonny. This reduces her character substantially, as it could have been just as easy to introduce another character as a love interest, or to simply not have one at all. Having Kate be a love interest forces her into the same box as so many other strong female characters, where the focus is placed on their relationship with a man instead of their role as intelligent and independent women. Not only that, it also reinforces the stereotype that women have to be attractive to men in order to hold high positions at the office.

The other woman in the movie is Jodie. Jodie’s first on-screen scene shows her as one of the members of the pit crew, who change the tires during the race. During this scene, she makes a critical mistake with the wheel gun, costing the team time and almost damaging the car. While F1® does give Jodie a ‘growth’ arc where she regains her confidence and improves at changing the tires, it doesn’t change the fact that it upheld the stereotype that women are not as capable as men in motorsport. This is especially harmful as it comes off of a huge shift in the fanbase of Formula 1, which is the rise of its female fanbase. In fact, the percentage of male versus female fans is nearly 50/50, and the Singapore Grand Prix last year saw more women in attendance than men. 

So, there’s clearly been a huge rise in recent years of the number of female fans and content creators who support and follow the sport. The creators of F1® would have known that it was going to be viewed by millions of female fans, especially given the popularity of the Netflix docuseries Drive to Survive. Given that female fans are more likely to interact with F1 media outside of just the races, it was likely that F1® was going to have a large female audience. The movie relied on female fans buying tickets to watch the movie, and then pretty much told them point-blank that Formula 1 isn’t a space for them. With both Kate and Jodie’s characters, F1® retold the outdated narrative that motorsport is not a space for women. This is a sentiment that many female fans have had to deal with when interacting with Formula 1 media, especially online. Actually, in the movie, there’s a scene where the second driver at APX GP, Joshua Pearce, is at a nightclub. While there, he gets recognized by a woman at the club, who then asks if he can introduce her to Carlos Sainz Jr. It’s included as a joke, but given that many women are told they only like F1 because the drivers are ‘attractive,’ it’s just the icing on the cake of the stereotyping in the movie. 

F1® had the opportunity to write women who broke barriers in this fictional but possible version of Formula 1. However, they instead chose to fallback on the easy, ‘acceptable’ story lines of women who need help from men to do their jobs, or regain their confidence. It’s upsetting that as Formula 1 is gaining incredible popularity through the rise in the number of female fans, it would then go and support a movie that discredits those same female fans’ abilities to be a part of the technical side of the sport. F1® had a lot of opportunities to give younger fans a role model of who they could be, but instead gave them the same story they’ve been told over and over by male fans: they don’t belong.