‘F1’ Composer Hans Zimmer on Scoring His Third Racing Movie: “It Was a Movie About a Team, Made by a Team”
Zimmer opens up about complementing the sound of Formula 1 engines with his electronic, futuristic score.
_F1: The Movi_e marks the third racing feature that Hans Zimmer has scored — following 1990’s Days of Thunder and 2013’s Rush — but it was a thrill unlike any other composing for a film that had unprecedented access to the world of Formula 1.
“I think the main thing I could add to F1 was excitement, pace and a little bit of romanticism,” the German composer tells THR, adding with a laugh, “One of the things that interested me was, you’ve got to be crazy to be a race car driver!”
F1, which stars Brad Pitt and Damson Idris as teammates on an underdog racing team, reunited Zimmer with producer and longtime collaborator Jerry Bruckheimer after they worked together on Days of Thunder as well as The Rock, the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and Pearl Harbor, among many others. Add Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski and real-life F1 champion driver Lewis Hamilton (who served as a producer) to the mix, and Zimmer couldn’t say no to the project.
When Zimmer first read the script for the movie, he knew he wanted to include as much electronic music as possible to match the howling of the F1 engine. “But there is orchestra as well, partly because I love the orchestra, partly because we live in a time where we need to support the orchestras,” he says.
“I did this film, which I really wanted to do because it was apolitical,” he adds. “It dealt with technology and fun, and at the same time, we’re living in complicated times. So I thought, ‘The one thing I could do really well at this moment in time is when people go to the cinema, [I want] to put a smile on their face.”
Hans Zimmer wanted the F1: The Movie score to resemble the howling of the cars’ engines. Scott Garfield
What resulted was a futuristic score infused with sounds from the ’80s. Zimmer, who worked on the music with co-composer Steve Mazzaro, approached the score for the opening sequence differently than with previous projects.
“Right at the beginning, when you see the car [driving around the circuit] and the drums come in, I go straight for a disco beat, and I’ve never done that before,” he muses. “I’ve always avoided that. Film music is all about making it so that the audience gets a surprise. That car going around, it was exciting, so I thought, ‘I’m going to celebrate that.’ “
After his career scoring more than 150 films, the thrilling racing sequences in presented a unique proposition for Zimmer.