09/07/2023
NEWS STORY
Mercedes boss, Toto Wolff has shed light on the team's role in the F1 movie Apex, scenes for which are being filmed at Silverstone this weekend.
Though details remain sketchy, thereby leading to all manner of speculation on social media, the APXGP cars will take to the track this afternoon, joining the rest of the field as they make their way to the grid ahead of the formation lap.
While filming began some weeks ago, Silverstone marks the first race weekend where the production company will work alongside its real-lifer counterparts, ahead of a summer that even Stefano Domenicali admits will be "intrusive".
Ignoring the fact that Brad Pitt's character, Sonny Hayes, is 59, the makers are looking for authenticity for the movie as opposed to a CGI-fest, and to that extent Mercedes Has been giving a helping hand.
While John Frankenheimer's 1966 movie Grand Prix used modified F3 cars - in some cases actually being towed in order to get in-car driver shots, Apex will use F2 cars which have been adapted by Mercedes.
"We've been involved pretty early," reveals Toto Wolff, "when we had the first discussions, we sent Brad to a driving school in France, going through the Formula cars from Formula 4 all the way up.
"We tried to be helpful with the narrative," he continues. "Lewis is an executive producer, so he wanted to make sure when the movie comes out, it's as realistic as possible.
"We had a few laughs, but I think it's a very good narrative, and the effort they've put in, we helped them. It was Fred's (Vasseur) idea, I think to use an F2 car and build the bodywork around it that looks like an F1 car. And then the garages and the pit wall, all of it, we tried to be helpful and give them the designs so they could be as realistic as possible.
"You see now, that is such an effort. I spoke to the director a few weeks ago and said: 'where are you?' expecting him to tell me he's in Hollywood, but he said 'I'm in my apartment in Brackley', so it's not all great with being a movie director. But yeah, massive, when you go in the garage and the whole set-up they have behind it, really unbelievable."
"We had some discussion a couple of months ago," adds Vasseur, "perhaps a bit more than one year, and I'm not sure for the fans it's a big difference.
"I think the job done on the car is amazing, and I'm not an expert of all these things but when you go into the garage, you have the feeling that it's a proper F1 team, and even better than some teams. It's amazing what they did and I hope that it will be at the level expected, because it would be a huge push for the F1."
What with Alfa Romeo, AlphaTauri, Alpine, Aston Martin... Audi and now APXGP, no doubt Toto and Fred will start claiming that the grid has too many teams with names beginning with the letter A - a major issue when it comes it making decisions involving alphabetical order - surely another bitter blow to Andretti.
Check out our Sunday gallery from Silverstone here.