Ron Howard movies are always well crafted, usually enjoyable and sometimes a little old fashioned. But they’re rarely ‘flashy’. He’s not a director who garners the attention that say a Scorsese, Tarantino, or Fincher might generate. In other words, he’s a Lauda, not a Hunt. And in 2013 he quietly went about making one of the best Formula 1 movies of the last 50 years. Not since 1966’s Grand Prix has Hollywood better captured the sport’s unique combination of glamour, danger and fierce competition between men who live to drive.

Rush is very much a Hollywood movie. It’s driven by plot and nothing’s going to slow it down. Facts are welcome but not essential. Details useful, but adjustable if inconvenient. This is a film that wants to strap you into the passenger seat, take the corners at 150mph and then drop you off too exhilarated to ask “Hang on, did it really happen like that?”

It helps of course that it’s based on one of the most fascinating rivalries in racing history, between two of the sport’s most compelling drivers, James Hunt and Niki Lauda, and largely focuses on the 1976 season, arguably the most dramatic in the history of F1. A season that featured disputes, disqualifications, plenty of team politics and Lauda suffering horrific life-changing burns and injuries after crashing at the Nürburgring, only to return to the track six weeks later, where he was eventually pipped to the world championship by Hunt in the final race… by one point.

The screenplay is by Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon, The Queen, The Deal, etc.) who has made a career out of streamlining real life into compelling drama. When we first meet Hunt (Chris Hemsworth), he is walking into a hospital, bloodied but unbowed and introduces himself as “Hunt, James Hunt”. He might as well have said, “Bond”. His charisma is so off the chart that when a nurse rushes to tend to him the viewer’s only thought is how many minutes before she jumps his bones (the answer is two)…

Lauda (Daniel Brühl) is presented as the polar opposite. He’s ratty-looking, sullen, disappears in a crowd. But he is nonetheless extraordinary, possessing an unshakeable confidence in his own abilities, an astonishing technical astuteness and, of course, remarkable driving skills. In rapid succession we see him walk out of his father’s lucrative business, take out a loan to buy his way in to a team, pull apart and reassemble his car, immediately making it faster, and then threaten to walk out if his new team don’t treat him like a number one driver. Then, just to cement his mythical rivalry with Hunt, the film has Lauda invite a woman out only to find that the British driver has already dated her.

Morgan first started working on the script on spec (i.e. nobody had commissioned him). “I grew up in England knowing all about James Hunt,” recalled the writer, “but I never knew Niki’s side of the story.”

After marrying a princess (no, really – Princess Anna Carolina von Schwarzenberg), Morgan lived for a time in Vienna and it was during this period that he approached Lauda with the idea of writing a script based on the 1976 season. Lauda agreed to meet up and provide Morgan with input during the draft stages. “We had a lot of discussions about the Hollywood movie and the reality,” said Lauda. “I always brought him back to the reality. They were very interesting discussions.”

The finished script found its way to Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan, of Working Title Films, famous for producing British movies with global appeal such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually and Les Misérables. The company had also recently co-produced Asif Kapadia’s award-winning Senna.

Fellner had been fascinated with racing since he was a teenager in the mid-seventies. “F1 was an epic piece of the sporting calendar on a weekly basis,” he recalled. “These guys were gladiators—incredibly sexy and exciting because they rolled the dice with death every weekend. They were rock stars, and no one personified that better than James Hunt. When I read Peter Morgan’s script, I couldn’t resist.”

The script was also what attracted Ron Howard. “I found the story completely irresistible,” said the director, who had worked with Morgan before on Frost/Nixon. “The characters are so rich. The rivalry so dramatic. It was violent, sexy and, ultimately, emotional and triumphant.”

“The characters are so rich. The rivalry so dramatic. It was violent, sexy and, ultimately, emotional and triumphant.” Ron Howard, director

A star of the seventies himself, Howard already had some insights into the era. “When this story was taking place, Happy Days was becoming the No. 1 show around the world,” said the director. “So I recognised the cultural differences of that period. It was the tail end of the sexual revolution, where there was nothing to fear and everything to celebrate… when sex was safe and driving was dangerous. The drive to express yourself, take chances and stand for something unique and particular was depoliticized coming out of the sixties, but it was still there on a cultural level. When I hear wild stories about F1, I realise people don’t quite do those things today but they are not entirely alien to my own understanding of what the world of celebrity was like in the seventies.”

Howard acknowledged that the script took some creative liberties with reality but felt they were justified. “Peter Morgan is great at looking at characters,” said the director. “When he deals with true stories, he discerns what makes those characters tick, and how to build scenes around that. Some of the scenes are purely factual, some are dramatic illustrations but they’re all meant to serve these ideas he’s developed. So, the results are always very honest, if not 1,000 per cent authentic.”

The script, and the film, are helped hugely by the two actors at the centre of the story, Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Brühl.

“Their physicality is almost laughably good,” said Alastair Caldwell, who was Hunt’s team manager and chief mechanic in 1976, and became a technical consultant to the film. “Chris looks like James. He’s the right size, the right colouring. Daniel’s even more perfect. His body language, size, everything’s almost eerie.”

Hemsworth won the part after sending in an audition tape while he was on location filming The Avengers. “I had seen him in Thor but had no idea if could be James Hunt,” said Howard. “But he convinced everyone with that audition tape. It was really remarkable. There was nothing more to say other than, ‘Please, sign that guy for the role.’”

As word of the project spread, a radio interviewer asked Lauda who might portray him in the film. He replied: “Everyone who has had his right ear burnt off can start making plans.”

In the end, the role went to Brühl, who had come to international attention as German sniper Frederick Zoller in 2009’s Inglourious Basterds. Lauda invited the actor to Vienna.

“When he called,” said Brühl, “I was nervous because I’d heard he was very frank and honest. He invited me to visit him but said, ‘Just bring hand luggage. In case we don’t like each other…’”

Fortunately, the meeting went well. “I liked him from the first day,” said Lauda. “He was down to earth and a real talented guy.”

With the cast in place, attention turned to production details, including recreating race tracks of the era. Production designer Mark Digby had the challenge of reimagining courses from Europe to Japan without leaving the UK. Instead, filming took place at Brands Hatch, Donington Park, Snetterton, Cadwell Park and Blackbushe Airfield, the former drag racing venue. “We had to create 12 to 15 different races each year from 1974 through 1976,” said Digby. “In addition to the race cars, there were lorries and caravans, ambulances and other support vehicles. There was the paddock area at each of the tracks where the mechanics work and bunting and signage to indicate we’re in a different country at a different grand prix… since we didn’t actually travel all around the world to do our filming.”

The crew did travel to the Nürburgring, the site of Lauda’s horrifying crash. “We went to the actual spot where the incident occurred,” recalled Howard. “The first time we went there, to scout, it was chilling. It was almost like entering a church, knowing Niki and what he went through and that we were going to re-enact it and re-create it. On the days of shooting, the adrenaline was pumping so we were not thinking so much philosophically. We were a little more practical, but everybody innately understood that there was something extraordinary about the opportunity to film there and the responsibility that involved.”

Recreating locations was one challenge. Recreating races was quite another. Not only getting the details and authenticity right, but also finding a visual language that would create something cinematic. Modern day racing coverage is so advanced that the filmmakers wanted to present race footage in a way that hadn’t been seen before.

Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, an Oscar winner for his work on Slumdog Millionaire, would sometimes use over 30 cameras to capture the action. “I’d never had so many lenses out in my life,” recalled Mantle. “They were all over the place: on the cars, under the cars, up the tailpipes, on the roof, under the roof. It was mad, and I was pushing my crew to their limits. But that pretty well describes the sport, doesn’t it? I learned quite a bit about those historic F1 cars. They’re death machines, rolling coffins. When you strip away the oddly colored panels, there’s nothing there but a ticking time bomb with gallons of fuel under your backside.”

The stunning race scenes, along with the vivid characterisations, helped make Rush a worldwide hit, more than doubling its budget back and giving Howard some of the best reviews of his career.

It also offered a lasting tribute to two champions and, ultimately, friends, who were never more driven than when competing with each other.

Rush

Released: 2013
Director: Ron Howard
Studio: Cross Creek Pictures, Imagine Entertainment, Revolution Films, Working Title, Double Negative
Stars: Daniel Brühl, Chris Hemsworth
Gross: $98.2m