Filming started for Ron Howard’s movie “Rush” at Blackbushe Airport.
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Joe Saward writes about F1 and the world
Filming started for Ron Howard’s movie “Rush” at Blackbushe Airport.
joeblogsf1 
Cool!
I experienced a tangible wave of nostalgia at the sight of those racing cars; the scene was so, so different then. Grand Prix racing was 98% FUN. Now, it is 98% MONEY, mostly corporate.
Any idea if these are genuine 1976 F1 cars or replicas, Joe?
Either way, they look fantastic. I look at photos & videos of classic old racing cars competing in grands prix and wonder how they would look in modern hi-res format. Rush will hopefully show us!
Seems like that they don’t really care about the tobacco ad ban… 😉
G’day Joe,
The cars are mock-ups aren’t they???
Thanks in anticipation.
For those in Britain who have the time, it may be interesting to put your name down to be an extra.
regards,
Woohoo! Really looking forward to this!
Apparently Ron Howard has become a regular at Roller Derby bouts…make of that what you wil…
They look prettier then today’s models! any idea how much slower per lap they’d be than the current crop?
Most motor racing films are pretty awful (Le Mans being a notable exception) but this looks quite interesting…………..
Lauda’s Ferrari = drool…
I hope they have managed to find some fresh-ish tyres. Those old ones will be as hard as rocks and have as much grip as a Morris Minor with cross ply tyres on sheet ice.
Wilson
Avon makes fresh F1 tyres of all eras, so I’m guessing they are using Avon tyres. But these tyres have Goodyear markings. I wonder if they had to get Goodyear’s authorization to make Goodyear-branded Avon tyres.
BTW, I’d love to read a “behind the scenes” article with all the explanations on how they got the replica cars made, how they sourced the other real cars, who drove the cars, etc.
Brilliant, love your post…
Fantastic!
Excellent, just excellent. i would love to be there to see this
Joe, thanks for the updates.
are they actual cars from Lauda’s time ?
I wonder how much did it cost them to rent those cars.
Wow, that looks great…… Can’t wait…..
Does anyone know who they’re getting to drive the cars?
What’s the massive wide device at the top of the boom??? Seems to have a tiny camera at each end. HD something? Microphones?
That’s rain, Hollywood style. A big tube with holes in on the top of a boom, that squirts water into the air. This is supposed to be the Fuji race, after all!
It is awesome that Joe can get and share these photos. When I first read about the project I was worried that it would never happen but seeing all of this is very exciting. I loved Apollo 13 so hopefully this will be just as good
Impressive. F1 is on a completely other planet now.
I assembled a Revell kit of that same M23 when I was 11. It brings me back… Can’t wait to watch this film.
Every time you see the cars from the 70s (and indeed 80s and 90s) you remember how much better they looked. I’ve not really liked them since 1998 when they went narrow (although they still looked reasonable) but in 2009 with the horrible wings and the new broken nose feature this year, combine this with a switch to V6 engines they just lose their magic. Organisers may think this doesn’t matter as fans will still watch but it doesn’t attract new fans, when I was young the reason I got into F1 was because the cars looked and sounded fast and mean.
Watching the film Grand Prix recently the cars sounded amazing, I doubt there could be a kid alive who could see and hear the cars and not want to be in one. Even watching some onboard footage recently of Alesi’s Prost from 2001 I think and the V10 sounded great, sadly we seem to be moving to a point where the cars are no longer interesting enough to drive the imagination.
looks more promising than the last set of pics i saw which were 5 or 6 wooden sheds lined up… hopefully this film is as good as it should be!
Hi Joe, great photos. Send shivers down my spine considering how horrific the season was for Lauda. Despite the occasional rubbish that comes out of his mouth nowadays we really have to take our hats off to the dedication and heroism this man had that year.
I heard that they had also done some driving shots of the cars at brands hatch.
Is there any studio shots for Hunt (Hemsworth) available? Would love to see how The Man is being portrait.
I wonder who’ll be driving the vintage F1 cars for the movie?
Hey Joe, are those the actual cars, or fibreglass replicas? Got to imagine that if they crash they are destroying history!
Keep up the great blog btw!
wow i wish i was one of the extras!
Isn’t that Ferrari the most beautiful F1 car ever. I’m not sure I’ll be able to watch this film. I followed 1976 as a teenager completely engrossed and I guess I have that film already in my head. Was at Brands to see Hunt win (yes, ok, I know what happened). F1 became prime time really after that.
I’m trying not to dribble on the screen. Beautiful cars.
How wonderful to see the old Ferrari crimson instead of the Marlboro-better seen-on-television-red.
Yes!
I need to see this movie
Wow…!
I’m off to Youtube to watch some old clips..
Sets my pulse racing just seeing the still images – hope the film lives up to the hype as i’m really quite excited about it! Just started reading shunt – the first chapter( thevlast of james life) is real tear jerking stuff.
How and where are they getting these cars from?
I read somewhere that the McLaren M23 is a replica.
The Ferrari 312T2 are replicas too: http://www.robaustin.com/social.html
2012-spec nose on Hunt’s car…
I believe Howard has already mentioned that many vintage cars are being provided by their owners, for surely they’d need originals for close-ups and garage scenes. One car that’s definitely original is this one: https://p.twimg.com/AnU_ldfCAAAVZ39.jpg
i can hardly wait to see this film.
This is the era when I used to attend the US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen.
My first year was 1974, an exciting weekend marred by the death of Helmut Koenigg, and the burning of a Greyhound bus in “The Bog”.
From the 1976 race I remember being in a grandstand in the anvil during morning practice, and see Niki pull over in front of us to tug at the balaclava under his helmet which was probably rubbing his still healing scars from the Nurburgring.
I must disagree with JB, the 1976 Ferrari 312T2 wasn’t the most beautiful F1 car, that honor has to go to the 1978 JPS version of the Lotus 79 in which Mario Andretti won the world driving championship.
Excellent story, thanks for sharing this
For those who are interested , here’s a forum post I found with updates and photos taken by the locals.
Very interesting insight indeed!
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=127&t=1107467&mid=0&i=20&nmt=Blackbushe+airport+turns+into+a+film+set+for+5+months%21&mid=0
Should I be worried that I’m more excited about this than the impending season? Normally I’m counting the days.
fantastic!
i get moved just by seeing the cars in their very original colours, the marlboro day-glo kinda red in the mclaren and the tradicionalíssimo crimson red in the ferrari; those are for sure perfectly accurate.
The cars are replicas fitted with 2.0 VW GTI engines (not the 1.6 Ford Ecoboost they promised the planning authority to minimise dB!!) I spoke to one of the drivers who was sitting in for Hunt – he was like a child with the first Buzz Lightyear off the shelf, he couldn’t wait. Of course he had to because of the delays on the first day of filming. The real McCoy come out later in the month for some action shoots.
The boom on the crane is a water lance – of course it was pissing down in Fuji in 76. Some of the extras populating the grandstand left in disgust when they got soaked yesterday! If you look at the pistonheads link you’ll see about 90% of the grandstand are made up of inflatable “Japanese” looking people – goodness knows where props got them from…
There is an even bigger rainwater rig sitting behind the grandstand waiting to be deployed. It probably covers about 150 sqm so the whole set can get soaked. Of course today nature is playing its part and its raining heavily anyway.
Even though its a filmset the atmosphere up there is incredible. I’ll get some more pics to Joe later in the week.
Now there’s an idea for filling those empty grandstands in China (at the far end of the straight)! Sadly, could apply to several other Grands Prix too.
No vw engine in those. There has been considerable work in concealing silencers within the body work to reduce the db levels.
A tweet pic from howard confirms they have a 6 wheel tyrrell! not clear if it’s a rolling chasis or whether it’ll be doing the business though.
Saw a picture in the paper this morning of Chris Hemsworth in his James Huny-monogrammed Marlboro McLaren overalls. Gotta say he looked the part. i am getting rather excited about this
Currently filming in Camberley Industrial estate, they’ve mocked up the McClaren Racing HQ, old McClaren Racing Transit and a bunch of Mini’s from the era.
Think these guys need a reality check actually – especially if they are going to have decapitated heads rolling round the film set!
http://forums.autosport.com/index.php?showtopic=159521&st=360
I read that thread on the autosport forum, and I think the need for a reality check might be mutual.
The speculation is that the photo which includes a helmet lying on the track near some wreckage, perhaps containing a decapitated head, depicts either Helmut Koinigg’s fatal crash in 1974 at Watkins Glen, or, because of blue bodywork in the photo, François Cevert’s fatal accident, also at the Glen the year before.
I suspect that the blue bodywork and white helmet, are actually depicting Lauda’s 1975 Nurburgring accident, and are from Harald Ertl’s Hesketh.
The controversial photo seems to be a production still rather than an actual frame from the film. It depicts Hunt in mufti and barefoot standing on the track amid the wreckage looking at the helmet while disinterested firemen look on. It’s the look on the firemen’s faces which make me think this is a production still of actors on a break.
It’s not at all clear whether or not that helmet contains a ‘head’ or that the same effect that makes us see the man in the moon, is playing a trick.
Now it could be that this is a sequence from the film intended to be a bit of psychological artistic licence, perhaps an analog of the scene in Apollo 13 where Jim Lovell’s son sees the explosive decompression when the Apollo Command Module hatch fails, something which didn’t happen.
In the 1976 German GP, Lauda’s Ferrari bounced back on to the track and was hit by both Ertl’s Hesketh, and Brett Lunger’s Surtees. The Hesketh had blue and white Penthouse/Rizla livery with a blue nose. There is a full page color photo of the car at the 1976 German GP on page 150 of the 1976-77 edition of Autocourse. It also shows Ertl wearing a predominately white helmet with a blue ‘pate’ and sponsorship markings over the visor opening.
Ertl had been Hunt’s team-mate at Hesketh in 1975 (as had Lunger for a few races at the end of the year), so I could see where this might figure into a “psychological” scene.
We’ll have to wait and see if such a scene was shot, and whether it end up on the cutting room floor, but if it indeed is tied to Lauda’s 1976 accident rather than either of the earlier accidents at the Glen, it makes much more sense.
i agree with you about the picture, think more likely to be taken during a shooting break, or maybe a scene dreamed by Hunt.
but it is very clear to me there is a fake head inside the bloodied white helmet laying on the ground, or at least a ‘face’.
regarding to which accident it could refer to, i think very unlikely to be Koinigg’s, given this had a very different livery on his helmet, also the guardrails at the Glen looked different, and the decapitated head ended not on the ground, but over rear part of car, behind the barriers – as shown in the only picture published in newspapers at the time as i can remember.
in the forum where the film scene picture is refered, someone suggests could be Gerry Birrell fatal accident at Rouen in 1973, a F2 race; Hunt was entered but “did not attend the race”, as said in Formula2.net. have no idea he was present there or not, anyway to be a scene he walks on barefoot with hands in pockets, could only be some kind of dream, i think.
To my eye it looks more like the cuff of a pair of racing gloves – stuffing their gloves and nomex balaclava into the helmet so they don’t get covered in kack or lost is something drivers do all the time (or maybe it looks that way to me because I would prefer that to be the case!)
I went to Blackbushe today to have a look. They were filming shots of Hunt and Hesketh getting outmof a helicopter, but I managed too get to see the cars in a marquee “garage” there were 4 Ferraris, 2 x 3112T and 2 x 312T2. All except one of the T2s were replicas but properly built ones, only with Zetec engines. there were 3 x Mclaren M23, one of which is real, real Tyrrelll 6 wheeler, Shadow, Surtees and a replica Brabham BT45C (I think that was what it was, I couldn’t get close). Plus a JPS Lotus – not sure whether real or not, and a BRM160D (not real as it had an 8 cylinder engine under the BRM Cylinder head covers.
All looked very good though.
I correct myself. Just checked my pics. It was purporting to be a BRM P160E – which would be correct for Watkins Glen 1973 which I worked out is what they were filming today what with all the Yank cars on the set.
Me and my daughter saw the set after they had stopped filmin wish I went when they were a lot of the extras on set are from yateley Hampshire were I live next to blackbushe airport x