Rush: behind the scenes

PH talks to Rush's actors, director and stunt driver for the secrets from the set

Step back to April 2012 and PH is being whisked out of London in a black people carrier to a secret, country house location. My camera is confiscated, I have to sign all manner of legal documents and then I'm led on to the set of Rush.

This, I'm asked to believe, is the Hesketh Racing HQ, owned by the eponymous millionaire who funded James Hunt's first F1 drive. The car and the team transporter are both original and the 70s vibe would be hugely convincing, were it not for the battery of movie lights and an army of people urging 'quiet'.

You'll know the score about Rush by now, this view behind the scenes a chance to find out how director Ron Howard and his team set about recreating Lauda and Hunt's bitterly contested 1976 season, how the actors prepared for the roles and what they actually drove during the filming.

Happy daze
Howard has come a long way since his days playing Richie Cunningham in Happy Days. I find him in his surprisingly modest trailer, picking at food from a polystyrene box. He looks a bit scruffy and not at all 'Hollywood'.

Nor does he pretend to be a life-long F1 fan but was introduced to the idea of Rush by the movie's writer, Peter Morgan. "Happy Days was becoming a global phenomenon just as these guys were becoming the elite of Formula One. The media focus and how it related to sexuality and social mores echoed for me. It was a wilder time and James Hunt was a remarkable sex symbol. He was like a lead singer in a rock-and-roll band."

The director acknowledges that the success of Senna renewed interest in racing films, although Rush is a very different concept. While Senna is a documentary painstakingly pieced together from archive footage, Rush is a docu-drama with its own interpretation of reality. "It's a work of fiction inspired by real events," says Howard.

Driven to distraction
Given Hollywood's recent attempts at racing movies - think Sly Stallone's abysmal Driven - this does not inspire confidence but Howard is, "hoping to transport people into the cockpit. I hope race fans will go and say 'they captured an authentic sense of it.'"

Much depends on how the action scenes are received. Steve McQueen's Le Mans might have had a ropey script but the racing made it an icon. "Le Mans was a great inspiration for us but it also represented a huge challenge," reckons Howard. "It was a contemporary movie and they got lots of cooperation from a racing community that was a lot freer and a lot more open. Even if F1 would allow us to go shoot at a Grand Prix, we couldn't do it."

Howard was forced to recreate the 70s using some Hollywood magic and authentic props. The movie uses Hunt's original, championship-winning McLaren M23 and Lauda's Ferrari 312 T2 for detail shots, alongside a six-wheeled Tyrrell, a March and a Surtees. Most of the action was filmed either at the Nurburgring Nordschleife or at Brands Hatch, which was asked to play both itself and Monza.

Augmented reality
Hunt's McLaren is reckoned to be worth around £2m so it's no surprise to learn that replicas were produced for the action scenes. Rob Austin Racing built four 'Ferraris', while the 'McLaren' was the work of WDK Motorsport. The 312s are based on Formula Renault single seaters with an old Formula Vauxhall-Lotus chassis used to create the M23.

These were also used to give driving lessons to Chris Hemsworth, who plays Hunt, and Daniel Bruhl (Lauda). The task of teaching the actors and coordinating the driving sequences fell to Niki Faulkner, a British GT racer and precision driver. "They both did three to four weeks training," he says. "We had them doing pit stops, slides and spins to understand how a racing car works. They needed to be able to drive and act at the same time. Chris is an Aussie and just goes for it, Daniel's a lot more analytical - just like Hunt and Lauda."

Hemsworth proudly shows me a clip on his iPhone of him sliding then spinning his 'McLaren'. "I'm not really a car person but when I drove it I thought, 'now I get it'. You can feel, hear and taste everything. It gets you right in the gut."

Lauda kink
For Bruhl, playing Lauda had an added challenge. He's not only still alive but still in the public eye as part of the Mercedes F1 team. "Peter [Jackson] knows him and we did seek his support for the movie," says Howard. "Niki's too busy to come on set and wait around for three questions a day but he's made himself available. I've had several meetings with him and Daniel [Bruhl] has him on speed-dial. When we were filming at the Nurburgring, Niki talked Daniel through the detail and we held the camera until we got it right."

Faulkner doubles for Hunt in the film but, ironically, was named after Lauda. "All the moves are realistic and happened in that year," he says. "You need plenty of action, but we don't want people to say, 'that would never happen.' This isn't Days of Thunder or The Fast and the Furious. I've even made sure everyone uses the correct terminology when they talk about the cars."

The movie's critical moment was shot at the Nordschleife, where the fiery crash that so nearly cost Lauda his life was recreated. "The only original footage was filmed by an eight years old boy on a Super 8 camera," says Faulkner. "To capture the drama we've had to reshoot it with a stunt driver."

Spending time on set, you got the impression that almost everyone involved was in awe of the men who raced and the machines they drove. "This really was a time when sex was safe and motor racing was dangerous," says Howard. "The deaths each year were like combat statistics but no-one would back off."

See the trailer here - full review here.

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