Yet another F1 film release? Right in the wheel tracks of the blockbuster successes of
Senna and
Rush, a documentary and a theatrical film respectively? Just like them based on the sport's past? What on earth can it offer over and above these? Well, in the case of
1, rather a lot as it turns out.
Even above and beyond the challenges outlined in the opening paragraph, the film-makers of
1 - a new film about the history of F1 - hardly could have asked for a more daunting set of objectives. Max Mosley told the film's director Paul Crowder at the project's outset that if he could 'capture why he's devoted 40 years of his life to F1 then he'll have succeeded'. In essence, the makers felt that their mission was to capture the essence of this the pinnacle of motor sport. Its glamour, its pace, its danger, and everything else besides. No mean feat.
Despite what it says on the tin though
1 isn't really a history of F1. Not exactly anyway. But nevertheless it can be said to have gone a long way to meeting its haughty mission statement.
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Martin Brundle starts
and ends the story
Credit: greenmashup / CC |
The film starts not in the beginning, but on the starting grid of the 1996 Australian Grand Prix. Perhaps not the most obvious choice, but its reasoning soon becomes clear. The animated buzz of the assembled crowd, the rich colours resultant of the full-beam Melbourne sunshine, as well as the mass of team members and assorted hangers on crawling over the assembled cars - all in eager anticipation of the race, and season, start - are familiar. As is the gradual, aching build up of tension, eventually to be released as the cars are unleashed like feral beasts when the red light goes out.
But then...not long after we had a spectacular accident: Martin Brundle got his braking wrong and cartwheeled over several cars, his machine disintegrating as it did so. The car, by now a heap of wreckage, came to rest upside down in a gravel bed, and the seconds of time wherein there is no movement from the cockpit seem to stretch on like hours. All of the harrowing accidents, some fatal, that took place within the previous 24 months suddenly seem scarily redolent. Yet, before you know it Brundle emerges, in his own words 'without a bruise on his body' and then can be seen - accompanied by the roar of the crowd - hot-footing it down the pit lane to find Sid Watkins in order to get the OK to take the restart.
