Welcome to Racing at the Movies
Hollywood has long enjoyed a love affair with motor racing. The sport’s dancing-with-danger nature and historic tales makes perfect big-screen material
James Hunt and Niki Lauda, as a whole new generation will know them, in Rush
The lights dim, then go out, followed by the familiar rumble of race engines, except this time it’s different. This is no Brands Hatch or Laguna Seca, this is the cinema. The chairs are much comfier and the smell of Castrol is replaced with that of popcorn hanging in the air.
The past decade has been a golden age for racing films which have brought the thrill of high-adrenaline sports to a new generation of movie-goer. We have seen two blockbuster Hollywood films take the romance and rivalry of the race track as their starting point with Rush focusing on the competing egos of James Hunt and Niki Lauda and Ford v Ferrari featuring the titanic clashes between US and Italian car royalty.
But the past decade has also seen a new type of immersive documentary, telling stories through superb archive footage. Films such as Senna and Ferrari: Race to Immortality piece together tales with first-hand accounts and restored film that are more compelling than fiction. Part 1 of Motor Sport’s celebration of racing movies zooms in on the best of the decade’s films. Using interviews with key players we explain how the films came about and how they were created. We go behind the scenes to reveal the secrets of the films’ success and explore our own unique archive of content to tell the real story of incidents featured as well as re-publishing our original reports placing the films in context.
In putting this special issue together we are indebted to Aubrey Day, the former editor-in-chief of Total Film for his movie expertise and the Getty archive for its fantastic collection of images. I hope you enjoy the results and if you do, then look out for Part 2, featuring more of the classic racing films from Le Mans to Grand Prix.
Coming soon…
Joe Dunn, Editor