Brad Pitt's 'F1': What this racing film teaches us about money and mindset
Joseph ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Kosinski and cinematographer Claudio Miranda give the audience a chance to be in the F1 car and experience races on the big IMAX screen. Follow the maverick of the F1 track Sonny Heyes schooling the rookie driver Josh Pearce race after race into a full scale Bollywood finish. And yes, there’s a ‘yeh dosti’ trope, a girl, a bet and a villain who needs to be beaten. Not to forget a ride off into a Baja sunset.
Rainy Friday morning outside and a luminous Brad Pitt inside! What more do you need? Brad Pitt plays Sonny Heyes - almost famous F1 star of yesteryear, now driving the Daytona 500 at night (when the stands are empty of any fans), living in a van. His friend Ruben Cervantes - played by the one and only Javier Bardem - shows up and asks Sonny to be his Hail Mary pass. The APXGp team is in trouble and needs a driver. Will Joshua Pearce, the talented but a rookie driver accept Heyes? When will two hotheads learn to be a team? Will an unknown team who has barely qualified actually win? And what money lessons can we learn from a Brad Pitt starrer F1 movie?
Brad Pitt mulls about the offer his old teammate and now an owner of an F1 team has made. He asks the waitress at the diner what she would do. She asks him: Is it the money?
Brad Pitt smiles and we know the answer: It is never about the money. He just does not know anything else but driving cars. Fast. He has nightmares about the accident he had years ago, but cannot stay away from the race track.
Serial entrepreneurs are like Sonny Heyes, no matter how many times they’ve failed on the track, they always come back. There are successes like Richard Branson and Oprah Winfrey but there are so many unsung others who cannot stop trying. One huge money lesson you learn from Sonny Heyes is frugality.
Sonny lives in a van, and though he gambles his dedication to driving is impeccable. He’s at the track before anyone else, he’s up at night studying the race track, figuring out moves and even though a modern gym is available to test his instincts as a race driver, he chooses to run in the open, never forgetting that it is the winning the race the whole thing is about. If you are like him, investing in new ventures, ensure that you understand every nuance of your business model. Frugality is the key, and keeping a track of finances, making sure your new venture is not overspending will help you reach your financial goals.
At first, the rookie driver Joshua Pearce is full of it - constantly checking his phone to see how good his social media score is, how well he’s liked. He’s what Sonny Heyes used to be: the promising star of the race track. But Sonny shows up and we see a clash of two strong personalities. One who knows that social media is only ‘noise’ and the other who thinks ‘elderly’ drivers need to take a back seat instead of advising him how to drive and when to push the car… They win only when they work as a team.
Sounds very Bollywoodish, but there it is. A film that will teach you that you still have tears of joy left inside of you.
When you work as a team with your personal finance manager, listen to his advice about when to invest in what stocks, and inform him about when you’d like to take risks and when you want to coast the waves of the markets, then and only then will you make money enough to come away the winner.
Study the racetracks of the money market as Sonny does. After all, you have only yourself to blame. Unless of course your family depends on the money you are investing, then you learn to work with a team of advisors. Some who will help you through your mistakes (you should not have invested in your best friend’s restaurant because he did not know basics like waking up early in the morning to take that trip to the wholesale market), others who will stop you from spending all the winnings at a nightclub (it was so much fun to watch DJ Tiesto for a couple of seconds in the movie!)...
And yes, another unpredictable chicane in the movie: not a money lesson, but a life lesson. Watch out for people who pretend to be friends and stab you in the back. Don’t let them know that you’re planning to redesign your financial strategy (just like Kate redesigns the car in the film to make it combat ready) or else they will hurt you.
Sure the ending is pure Bollywood, a much well deserved catharsis, but as an audience you come away with a huge dollop of hope. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall during editing! I would have saved all the Verstappen and Hamilton clips, and Norris’s parts too! Plus the unused footage from the micro cameras inside the F1 cars! The roar of the engines is still in my ears and I am hoping to someday make it to the Baja race!
Manisha Lakhe is a poet, film critic, traveller, founder of Caferati — an online writer’s forum, hosts Mumbai’s oldest open mic, and teaches advertising, films and communication. She can be reached on Twitter at @manishalakhe.
