I first experienced the sensory overload of being close to a Formula 1 car going full speed during a test day for the British Grand Prix last summer. The rumbles from the cars as they pull out of the pits feel like they’re shaking your bones loose, and each crescendoing shriek as the vehicles streak through your field of vision is like the shrill fizz of a firework that’s almost grazed your ear.
In releasing the trailer for its upcoming film, F1 The Movie, Apple has tried to recreate some of this sensory experience in miniature for anyone with an iPhone. The trailer taps into the device’s Taptic Engine to vibrate at different frequencies during the scenes featuring the F1 cars. Is it a little gimmicky? Sure. But it’s also clever and fun, and the perfect way to build excitement among F1 fans such as myself who are also suckers for immersive experiences.
To try out the experience, you’ll need an iPhone running iOS 18.4 or later. You can find the trailer with the Apple TV app on your phone.
F1 The Movie will debut in UK theaters from June 25 and head to US theaters on June 27, and I’m excited for a few different reasons. I’m a huge Drive to Survive fan, for a start, and last year, during that same test day when I was at Silverstone, the movie’s cast and crew were on site shooting a couple of scenes. While I didn’t see Brad Pitt, I got to observe his car and the inside of the fake garage the team had set up while wandering down the pit lane.
There would be no way to make a truly convincing movie about F1 without fully immersing the shooting within the existing traveling circus that is the F1 world. I was impressed with the level of detail I observed — if you didn’t know any better, you wouldn’t have been able to pick out the fictional F1 team from the real teams in the pit.
This movie is a big-budget, star-studded effort from Apple. Its main challenge will be bringing the same tension and drama that F1 fans are used to seeing from the races and drivers in real life.
