F1: The Movie has been highly anticipated since its production began in July 2023. With its high-speed races, driver drama and heart-pounding collisions, it was destined to be a hit for Formula One fans and film fanatics alike. But following its international release on the 25th of June, 2025, its representation, or lack thereof, of women in motorsport has proven to be controversial.
This film centres around the redemption of an old Formula One driver, Sonny Hayes, who returns to save the doomed fate of the fictional APXGP team. It follows the team’s impending downfall, failing to win because of their inability to work together, and ultimately, their unsuccessful cars. This responsibility weighs on the team’s first female technical director, Kate McKenna.
Yet of course, being the most prominent female character, she becomes the inevitable love interest for the protagonist. To drive the plot of the film, this budding romance is what fuelled her to magically alter the cars and lead the team on the road to success. It’s an outdated cliche; a man swoops in to show her how to do her own job and everything is suddenly on the right track. This is a poor portrayal which unnecessarily undermines successful, capable women.
It was disappointing, to say the least, to watch the obvious absence of women throughout a film with a wide, impressionable outreach to younger fans. ‘Formula One is a team sport. It always was’, stated Kate’s character, played by actress Kerry Condon. Despite this central message, the two notable female characters both served a demeaning purpose. The main female character was reduced to becoming the romantic interest, whilst the other female engineer was depicted as a liability to the team. This subtle misogyny might have gone unnoticed behind the fast cars and star-studded cast, but it was what lingered in my mind as I left the cinema.
Actress Simone Ashley was controversially cut from the film after over a year of filming. Whilst she was set to play the rookie driver’s love interest, even portraying a woman in yet another predictable romance role would have at least been more female representation. Is it not enough for women to have their own character development beyond romance?
F1 driver, Lewis Hamilton, was a producer on this film, and with his inclusion came hope for authentic representation and equality on the big screen. It was important to Hamilton to focus on ‘making sure the cast is diverse, making sure we’ve got a woman in a pit stop, which we never, ever had at the actual track’, according to his interview with Esquire. However, the only ‘woman in the pit stop’ is the one who messes up and is doubted for the rest of the film. Women in male fields not being taken seriously isn’t the inclusivity Hamilton promised to provide.Considering F1: The Movie is a film about a team sport, was dismissing the integral work of women throughout the film the best choice? The romantic subplot and anticipated representation undermines and sets back all the stereotypes women in motorsport have battled to break. F1: The Movie has made one thing clear; within motorsport, the race towards equality is far from over.
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