The first race for Hayes is Silverstone, and some of our first cameos for the actual drivers on the F1 grid. I don’t know why but I expected more screen time from them, especially given how much they’ve been paraded around to promote the movie at premieres, yet instead all we see is them lining up for the national anthem and climbing into their respective cars. In fact, the best use of a real driver is probably Fernando Alonso coming up to Hayes in the media pen, to give him a pat on the back for a decent result later on in the film.

The on-board and action shots are certainly a highlight of this movie, but I would expect nothing less from the mastermind behind Top Gun: Maverick. Being able to see the intensity in Hayes and Pearce’s eyes or the sweat on their brows – thanks to their conveniently clear visors in all conditions – really makes you feel immersed in the moment, as circuits like Monza or the Hungaroring pass you by behind. It’s clearly well made, giving fans a rare glimpse into what it looks like to drive these iconic circuits whilst engaged in combat around you.

Learning to race was a big task that shouldn’t be underestimated for Pitt and Idris too, with the duo spending weeks driving Formula 3 cars before they made the move up to Formula 2-spec cars made to look like an F1 machine for the movie.

As what feels inevitable in a racing movie, there are also crashes: lots of them. It feels like a race weekend can’t unfold without the APEX GP team needing to entirely rebuild the car. Small details that have been overlooked also become glaringly obvious to the F1 diehard fans among us, like a lack of double-waved yellows after incidents or allowing a driver to show up and race despite not having participated in qualifying.

There’s also a questionable storyline arc where Hayes is deliberately causing safety cars during a race in order to benefit his team-mate’s strategy, an idea that mimics ‘crashgate’ and would likely result in a black flag or race ban if used today. Instead, it’s brushed off and he’s praised internally for his ‘forward thinking’. Boo. Do better.

Blended in between the factual inconsistencies and crashes is a romance between Hayes and his new technical director ‘Kate’, portrayed by Kerry Condon. Introduced as the first-ever female to hold this title in F1, it’s a nice touch to give a woman this opportunity in a fictional race team but the bubble is quickly burst when she sleeps with Hayes, and takes his advice on designing the car which suddenly works wonders.

The movie also fails the ‘Bechdel test’, a measure used to see if two women have a conversation about something that isn’t about a man across a piece of media. It might feel like an overreaction or irrelevant point to some, but it is still a disappointing representation for a group that will be a large percentage of the audience for this film.

It’s this nitpicking and oversight on some basic storylines that, for me, takes away from the wizardry that’s happened to make this film. Overlaying APEX GP branding on existing cars to create an 11th team across real races, or the camera technology that captures on-track battles from an entirely new perspective to the sounds of composer Hans Zimmer, should make this a masterpiece in racing cinema.

Instead, for the F1 fans at least, it’s an underwhelming and unrealistic portrayal of the sport. Pitt does a good job as a ‘washed up racer’ and his real-life ability to become Benjamin Button means the fact that he’s actually 60-years-old during most of the filming is forgotten about. Most of us also love an underdog story, and this has it by the bucketload, but trying to do what they do in the span of nine races is practically impossible. It’s a shame, especially with Lewis Hamilton and Toto Wolff as producers on the project, but with the level of access they had into Formula 1 itself, it felt a little like APEX GP before Sonny Hayes showed up: pointless.