By Alan Baldwin
LONDON (Reuters) – Brad Pitt’s F1 movie is topping the box office charts worldwide but the Hollywood A-lister is not done with Formula One, or racing.
Like his fictional big screen character Sonny Hayes, Pitt has been offered a second chance to don race overalls and lap at 200 mph.
McLaren F1 chief executive Zak Brown told Reuters on Wednesday that Pitt had a standing offer to “come out and play” — and expected the 61-year-old not only to take him up on it but also take his passion for racing further.
Pitt drove a Formula One car for the first time with McLaren at Austin’s Circuit of the Americas last month, after driving F2 cars disguised as F1 cars for the movie, and has been raving about the experience ever since.
He did have one regret, however.
“Ask me how fast I went. Three mph short of 200 mph,” Pitt said at the New York premiere. “I want to go back. I want to hit 200.”
Brown indicated that it could be arranged.
“He did a great job, he can drive a race car,” he said at a McLaren event for the team’s army of fans in London’s Trafalgar Square, with title-chasing drivers Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.
“I’ve traded notes with him, it was the time of his life. I feel like he’s a racer now, so anytime he wants to come out and play he’s more than welcome to. And that’s a standing offer.”
When asked if he expected Pitt to take him up on it, Brown replied: “I wouldn’t be surprised looking at the level of enthusiasm that he had. I sent him his data, he wanted to understand and learn. So yeah, I bet he will.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if one day you saw Brad Pitt racing some sort of sportscar,” said Brown. “Paul Newman always used to say he was a racing driver, and an actor in his spare time.
“He (Pitt) is clearly in good physical shape. He had no physical limitations.”
Pitt would not be the first Hollywood heartthrob to go racing for real.
Patrick Dempsey, star of medical drama Grey’s Anatomy, has raced Porsches at Le Mans as did the late Paul Newman, who also founded Newman/Haas Racing.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Ed Osmond)
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