IWC reveals a new partnership with Lewis Hamilton, working with him & Brad Pitt on their Formula 1 film
Jamie WeissFormula 1 and watches are a match made in heaven. This is a topic we’ve explored at length here at Time+Tide – mostly because we’re passionate F1 fans as well as watch geeks. Virtually every team on the 2024 grid has a Swiss watch sponsor – with one of the most prominent of these being IWC, who has partnered with the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team since 2013. F1 has done much to raise IWC’s profile among motorsports fans, with Sir Lewis Hamilton’s unprecedented six driver’s titles with the team while wearing IWCs proving a particular boon for the Schaffhausen brand.
Now, IWC has just revealed that they’re officially partnering with Lewis Hamilton again on Apple Original Film’s highly anticipated forthcoming Formula 1 film, directed by Joseph Kosinski and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer as well as by Lewis Hamilton’s recently launched production company, Dawn Apollo Films. Hamilton has been critical as a technical advisor for the film, which hopes to achieve a degree of realism few motorsports films have ever accomplished.
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It’s been confirmed that in the film – which is as of yet unnamed but is rumoured to be called Apex – IWC will appear as a sponsor of the APX GP team, a fictional 11th team on the grid that the film’s protagonists (played by superstar Brad Pitt and rising star Damson Idris) race for. IWC joins a slew of other real-world brands appearing as APX GP team sponsors, including fashion brand Tommy Hilfiger, software company Expensify and appliance manufacturer SharkNinja. Talk about corporate synergy…
Naturally, Pitt, Idris and other APX GP team members will all be wearing IWC watches in the film, just as Mercedes team members and drivers George Russell and Lewis Hamilton do in real life. We’ve also spotted Brad and Damson spectating more than a few F1 races over the last 12 months, all while wearing IWC watches.
Not much has been revealed about the movie’s plot so far, but what we know is that it’ll star Pitt as veteran American driver Sonny Hayes, who is tempted out of retirement to compete at the struggling APX GP team alongside a promising young British teammate, Joshua Pearce, played by Idris. The character of Pearce has parallels with Lewis Hamilton, who made his debut in Formula 1 back in 2007 at the age of 22. Other confirmed cast members include Javier Bardem, Tobias Menzies and Kerry Condon.
What’s particularly interesting about this film is that it’s being filmed at real F1 races, including the British Grand Prix this weekend. (Filming commenced at the British Grand Prix last year.) APX GP has been given its own garages at races, with the actors driving an F2 car mocked up to look like a current-regulation F1 car. At the British Grand Prix last year, Pitt and Idris even stood alongside the real drivers on the grid for the British national anthem – just like they would if they were actually competing.
“We are a brand with a long-standing connection to motorsport, so we could not miss out on the opportunity to become a part of this project,” Chris Grainger-Herr, IWC CEO explains. “We are thrilled that the movie will be shot using race cars on real racetracks, and we cannot wait to see what an incredible experience this will be on the screen.”
It looks like IWC wants to repeat the same sort of partnership with this F1 film that they enjoyed with Top Gun: Maverick, which was filled to the brim with characters using IWC watches, including a stopwatch they made exclusively for the film. IWC also prominently appeared in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, with the film’s villains wearing exclusive IWC prop watches that inspired two limited edition, real-world models.
Why is this interesting? First of all, it means that we might see some interesting IWC watches appear on wrists in the film, as well as at the real-life races they’re filming during this year. (I wonder if we’ll see any piece uniques?) But it’s also indicative of a growing trend in the movie industry for watch brands to get intimately involved in film production.
Of course, watchmakers getting in bed with Hollywood is not a new phenomenon. Omega’s legendary six-decades-long partnership with the James Bond franchise immediately comes to mind, as do Hamilton’s many collaborations across the entire gamut of cinema, from Dune and Interstellar to Indiana Jones and Oppenheimer.
One brand that also comes to mind as increasingly embedding itself in Hollywood productions is TAG Heuer, which has taken exceptional advantage of having Ryan Gosling as a brand ambassador, with the star wearing the brand’s watches in films like The Gray Man, The Fall Guy and Barbie – the latter of which saw Gosling specifically request vintage Heuer models from the brand’s archive to wear during his villain arc as Ken.
However, what’s particularly genius about IWC’s involvement with this F1 film is that while yes, at the end of the day, it is just product placement, it actually lends the production a heightened sense of realism. F1 is a sport where drivers and cars are already plastered in sponsors – to the point that it’s an inextricable part of the sport’s aesthetic. F1 without sponsors would just look weird. Hell, many F1 sponsors and their liveries have also reached iconic status: Marlboro, Martini, Gulf, John Player Special…
Indeed, I’d say one of the most impactful pieces of F1 sponsorship in recent years has been IWC’s, with the brand pioneering placing graphics of their watches on the gloves of drivers (something other watch sponsors in F1 have since started to imitate). F1 is a sport where weight means everything, so modern drivers without exception don’t actually wear watches while driving. However, by placing IWC graphics on their gloves, it makes it look like they’re wearing them – and with cameras mounted behind driver’s heads and in their helmets, so their gloves are always visible, you get a lot of eyeballs on an IWC ‘watch’.
The other notable part of this partnership is that it also represents an unofficial announcement of IWC’s continued partnership with Lewis Hamilton on a personal level. It was speculated that, with Hamilton’s impending move to Scuderia Ferrari at the end of the 2024 Formula 1 World Championship, he would also be leaving IWC’s fold of ambassadors, as Ferrari has a partnership with Richard Mille. However, in what we’re sure will be welcome news for many watch fans, it seems Lewis and IWC will continue their partnership. Hopefully, that means we’ll continue to see the pair collaborate on some more signature editions…
UPDATE 5/7/24: The name of the film has been revealed – it’s simply called “F1”.