Lewis Hamilton reveals critical change made to Brad Pitt F1 film

Lewis Hamilton has revealed how he was involved in making a last-minute change to the script of the Brad Pitt F1 film. 

Released earlier this year, F1 tells the story of former F1 prodigy Sonny Hayes (Pitt) returning to grand prix racing to aid a former team-mate's struggling team. 

Hayes is presented as a 'gun for hire' after being forced to quit F1 in the early 1990s following a serious crash, with Hamilton detailing how the initial script called for a low-speed Monaco fireball, before he remembered the accident which befell Martin Donnelly in 1990.

At Jerez in qualifying for the Spanish GP, Donnelly suffered a suspension failure on his Lotus, hitting the barrier at nearly 160mph and suffered horrific internal injuries and severe fractures to his legs - one of which was almost amputated. 

Fortunately, he survived, with Hamilton revealing how this came to be the inspiration for Pitt's character.

"Brad’s crash in the original script was meant to be in Monaco through the last corner, and the car would go into flames," Hamilton told Vanity Fair. 

"But it’s a very slow part of the track, and it’s not a place where you would have a crash like that. I said: 'There’s this unbelievable crash with Martin Donnelly, many years ago, where he’s lying on the track. We should use that image.'

"I got in touch with Martin and asked if we could use the footage from the crash. He said: 'Absolutely, I’d be honoured.'

For the writer [Ehren Kruger], being American, it was so new to him. He had to learn on the go, and my goal was to help him navigate that process. 

"The terminology he used was what he assumed racing was about, but was naturally far off. I helped him change the words, make them sound like racing jargon and more realistic to what we experienced in that world.

"We couldn’t film the footage with a Formula 1 car ’cause it’s far too expensive. We had to use a Formula 2 car that had all the extras put on it to look like a Formula 1 car, but it’s not as fast as a Formula 1 car. 

"The sounds that they tried to put over it, in terms of the gearshifting and the noise of the Formula 1 car, didn’t match the corners. That was the longest and most intricate piece for me to sit around and go: 'That’s Turn 15 off down the straight. We need to use that gear sound, and that’s the second gear corner, so we need the engine to be down in second gear.'

"We had to go and find those snippets from all these different races and bits of sound footage that we had."