Simone Ashley has revealed she and her F1 co-stars sometimes only had five minutes to shoot a particular scene during real Grand Prix races.

The upcoming sports action film stars Brad Pitt as a Formula One driver who comes out of retirement to mentor a young rookie played by Damson Idris.

The film, directed by Joseph Kosinski, was made over two years, with many scenes being shot during real Grand Prix championships around the world.

The Bridgerton actress, who has an undisclosed role in the film, revealed on the Dish podcast that the stakes were “pretty high” when they had such tight windows to shoot their scenes.

“Traditionally, you would do a scene and you’ve sometimes got all afternoon or an hour or so, you do like eight takes to however many takes,” she explained. “Sometimes, Joe Kosinski, our director, would just be like, ‘Right, we’ve got five minutes. We’ve got like two shots at this.’

“So once we got into the rhythm of it all, it really caught on and you just had to be on it. You’re in the real Grand Prix, like you hear all the crowds and the engines and it’s just chaos. At the same time we’re shooting this movie, there’s a real race going on with the real racers and all of that. The stakes were pretty high.”

In addition to various Grands Prix, Ashley revealed that they also filmed a sequence in the Lapland region of Finland.

“I was in the Arctic, I was in Finland, in like the north of Finland, and we were driving on a frozen lake in McLarens,” she shared. “That was pretty wild. They called it the Arctic Experience and I was like, ‘Yeah, cool, yeah’ and then we were on the plane, I was like, ‘Are we going to the Arctic?!’ And my friend was like, ‘Yeah!’ We were in Lapland. I’m so glad I packed my thermals.”

The Sex Education star added that she joined the cast last year, a year into production, and wrapped her role at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

F1, which features real drivers such as Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, will be released in cinemas on 25 June.

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