Ford vs Ferrari: The inside line with pro driver Tony Hunt

The unsung heroes of action films, those stunt performers working behind the scenes, have always intrigued moviegoers. Just how do they accomplish such daring deeds (aka “gags”), risking life and limb as stand-ins for the stars?

To find out how they film the crashes and daredevil antics, we met with Tony Hunt, stunt driver for the movie Ford v Ferrari. It involved some serious stunt work, since that movie is ‘inspired by actual events’, as the Hollywood saying goes. In addition to handling GT40s at speed, he also manned the wheel of Cobras built by Superformance, one of which he purchased after filming was completed.

A lifelong competitor and a third generation of a famous racing family, he started out his career in Quarter Midgets at the tender age of five, and progressed up the ladder through karts, Formula 2000 and stock cars. He’s the winner of 10 USAC championships, with the first being a road-racing championship under the Russell Racing School banner. He also worked many years in the manufacturing business as a professional driver, brand ambassador and driving coach, most recently with Jaguar.

Besides participating in pro motorsports, he’s also driven movie stunt cars Herbie Goes NASCAR, Talladega Nights, Venom, and a couple from the Fast and Furious franchise. So how did he break into the movie business? “I was living in Charlotte, North Carolina, when a Ford commercial came to town, which was filmed at a nearby track in Darlington, South Carolina,” he says. “I was picked as one of the drivers because I had experience on the high banks.”

Of course, filming a movie and dicing it up on the race track are not the same, even though the skills involved definitely have some overlap. Hunt says it took some getting used to: “It’s similar in the way you have to commit sometimes at a high level and there’s risk involved. But it’s very different when you have to program yourself to create a wreck or near-miss, because our mindset and instinct has always been to avoid a wreck.”

Then there’s the interaction with the movie’s stars. Hunt says that a major portion of the movie was shot alongside the actors. “We would do our scene with the cars and they would swap with us and finish the scene with dialogue,” he explains. “All of the actors were very friendly and great to work with and I found it exciting to watch them transition into their characters, such as Christian Bale, who played the role of driver Ken Miles.”

How well did this famous actor perform behind the wheel? “I sat with Christian in the car on several occasions to guide him on what I was doing in the car,” Hunt says. “He was a natural and made it look easy. He has a genuine passion for driving and took to it quite quickly.”

To sharpen his skills, Stunt Coordinator Robert Nagle took him to the Bob Bondurant School prior to shooting so he got a real feel for the dynamic threshold of the cars. Not all of the shoots went smoothly, however. During the three months of filming in Georgia and California, there were some dodgy moments. “There’s always going to be close calls in exciting action scenes,” Hunt admits. “The most challenging ones for us were the rain scenes in the night. Many gallons of water were let out of sprinklers high above the track in certain sections, and along with [poor] visibility, there was always a concern for traction and how much water we were driving into.”

Surface conditions were always changing, so, “We would get a run at the scene at very high speeds in the dry, and come upon a blanket of water in the air and on the surface,” he adds. “Many times the car would plane on top of the water with very little directional control.”