REVIEW – ‘F1’ slamming on the brakes: A huge setback for feminism in motorsport

Motorsport is an extremely male dominated sport both in terms of athletes, employees and fans, which has time and time again resulted in an environment where women don’t feel comfortable and respected.

In 2025 the F1 movie is coming out. A movie starring Hollywood actor, Brad Pitt made to be as representable as possible, with seven time Formula one world champion, Lewis Hamilton being a big part of the inspiration for the storyline.

The movie is meant to attract new fans and make more people interested in the sport. Despite this, they have chosen to give the movie a romantic subplot, which would be great, because who doesn’t love a little romance?

Except this isn’t just a silly little romance, it’s a huge setback for women in motorsports…

They have chosen to make the romance between the main character Sonny Hayes, a Formula one driver and a female employee of the team.

To say it simply they are romanticizing a deeply unprofessional and inappropriate workplace relationship in a sport where women are already highly objectified and hated by the male fans. A sport where women are a minority, and they are being sexualized every day.

A sport where little more than a year ago there was a huge scandal about a person in power sexually harassing a female employee of his. Read about the continuing legal battle here.

This sloppy storyline is something that would have been expected from the fanfiction platform Wattpad. A questionable romance story build on power dynamics and harmful stereotypes, something that many fans find weird even when written on a fanfic site.

This film is doing the exact same thing! Except they aren’t a 15-year-old girl writing about their favorite Formula one driver. This is a huge production, that is going to reach millions of people, which makes this a hundred times worse.

They are essentially telling their huge audience of current and incoming motorsports fans that women in motorsport are not professionals but sexual objects – less capable than their male colleagues and undeserving of the same respect.

In a sport where the agenda of bringing in more women and girls, to try to make it a safe space, and to promote equality in general. This production is working against this entire movement, causing female fans to take to social media to express their frustrations:

finally watched the f1 movie trailer and so incredibly disappointed about that “romance”. so tone deaf and misogynistic to have a strong female character meant to play a tp marginalized into a romantic interest that’ll inevitably be used only as a prop for the male lead.

— kheet (@leclyke) March 14, 2025

This movie had a chance to portray female employees as strong and capable, giving them the same amount of credit as their male counterparts, but instead they chose to reinforce harmful stereotypes and reduce a strong female character to a love interest and an inappropriate one at that.

Making sure that motorsports will remain an uncomfortable and hostile environment for female athletes, employees and fans.

Text: Catharina Waterstradt
Photo: Kévin et Laurianne Langlais via Pexels