Behind-the-Scenes of Ford v Ferrari: High-Tech Kit and Attention to Detail for Realistic Racing

With its gritty, high-intensity race sequences, Ford v Ferrari has become a hit film with a swathe of motor racing fans due to its realism. Computer generated effects were limited to crash scenes and overall establishing shots of the grandstands, while the cars you see look identical to the ones that would have competed in the actual Le Mans 24 Hours race in the mid-1960s – albeit modern recreations.

But how was this realism achieved? As these exclusive behind-the-scenes pictures show, the answer is with a lot of high-tech kit and some good old-fashioned attention to detail. Motor Sport caught up with the film’s vehicle director Rob Johnson – speaking from Los Angeles – to talk us through the photographs, many of which he took himself between takes. Other images were taken by stunt driver Derek Hill (who you can read more about on page 86). Johnson worked on the project for seven months, leading a team that would use, and occasionally crash, the more than 400 cars used during a flurry of filming, mostly in Georgia and California, in summer 2018.

The largest set for the film was this accurate reconstruction of the Le Mans pit buildings, which was constructed at Agua Dulce Airpark, a private airport in Santa Clarita, California