You can't fail to have noticed the absolute whirlwind of publicity surrounding F1: The Movie. It's been in cinemas, and it's now streaming on Apple TV, complete with a pounding soundtrack by the incomparable Hans Zimmer.
All of which clearly impressed the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) as its members have voted F1 into contention for an Oscar for 'Best Picture'. In a year that also gave us Hamnet and One Battle After Another, that seems almost obtuse. And I say this as a dedicated petrolhead...
Does heaps of Apple money a good film make?
Given the Apple cash backing the film, the presence of director Joseph Kosinski (who gave us the brilliant Top Gun: Maverick, and the underrated Oblivion) and a cast that includes Javier Bardem (always good value), Tobias Menzies (underserved here, but check him out in the fantastic Manhunt, which is nothing to do with cars), the excellent Damson Idris and the luminous Kerry Condon (my enthusiasm for Brad Pitt is clearly well in check) this should have been the film that petrolheads have been waiting for.
The way Kosinski captures the movement and violence of Formula One cars is genuinely dramatic, but... there's something missing. There's a faint airlessness to the film, and it's far too much gloss and not enough substance.
There's also deep irritation within me for the way F1 rules and regulations, and even just plain old reality, are so clearly flouted at times. "We have to engineer our car for combat?” Puh-lease.
And then there's the speech. At one point in the film, Pitt delivers the 'why we race' speech, which drivels on for what feels like half an hour. It ultimately reaches the same conclusion that Steve McQueen took just two lines to say in 1971's Le Mans - "Racing is life. Everything in between is just waiting.”
Le Mans is best, but not that one
Not that Le Mans can make any great claim to being a great film. But for the petrolhead it's a gold mine of early seventies sports car racing footage, most of it filmed for real during the 1970 running of the 24-hour race, but the plot and the acting performances are turgid at best.
No, if it's truly entertaining motorsport movie action that you want, check out the other Le Mans film, Le Mans '66. OK, so the historian in me wants to die of cringe when Enzo Ferrari shows up at the track (that never happened) and there's no mention at all of the sheer drama of John Surtees walking out on Ferrari only hours before the race.
And yes, it does fall occasional prey to that ever-constant racing movie trope of a driver suddenly realising that there's another quarter inch of throttle pedal travel that he's not yet used (c'mon - all racers are flat out everywhere).
However, the twin performances of Matt Damon - oozing charisma as a Carroll Shelby who was in real life never that handsome - and Christian Bale, who nails the prickly personality of the brilliant Ken Miles, and the incomparable Catriona Balfe as Mollie Miles, lift the film beyond a level that most motorsport movies reach. You're watching this one for the characters as much as the cars. If it's on the TV (or you have a Disney+ subscription) make sure you watch it.
Is Le Mans '66 the best of the motor racing movies? Probably. Certainly it's a notch above Rush (not currently streaming anywhere but it's on DVD and digital download, and may well pop up on terrestrial schedules coming up to the start of the new F1 season) in which director Ron Howard tries to bring his Apollo 13 eye for detail to the 1976 F1 season, but the film just trips up once too often.
German actor Daniel Bruhl's performance as Niki Lauda is stunning, both pre-and-post the fiery Nurburgring crash, but while it's all too easy to imagine flocks of women falling at the feet of the beefy Chris Hemsworth, playing James Hunt, Hemsworth just doesn't nail Hunt's real-life roguish charm.
Equally, for a true motor racing fan, it's just too often obvious that the 'global' racetracks on which the action takes place are all just Brands Hatch shot from different angles.
Sometimes real life is more interesting
We can do better, and we can do so by switching from the fictional and fictionalised to the real and true. I'm not for a moment going to suggest tuning into Netflix's Drive To Survive, as any real F1 fan knows that half of the drama in that series is manufactured, with convenient editing plucking incidents from all over the timeline of the season to try and build a point of crisis or conflict. Harumph.
No, I'd first turn to Sky Documentaries and look up Michele Mouton - Queen Of Speed. Mouton broke down the gender barrier in rallying in a way that still somehow hasn't happened in Formula One and did so when rallying was both at its most competitive and its most dangerous.
The French driver mastered the incredible Audi Quattro in the 1980s, and to watch the footage of her and co-driver Fabrizia Pons hauling the incredibly rapid four-wheel-drive coupe over the special stages of Monte Carlo, Sardinia and Sweden is really something special. A story as inspiring as it is entertaining.
Mixing Hollywood glamour with real-life racing is Winning: The Racing Life Of Paul Newman (DVD and digital download) which charts the double-Oscar-winner through his career as a racing driver and IndyCar team owner.
It's a showcase both for Newman's boyish charm and his astonishing ability as a driver - not only did he come within an ace of winning the 1978 Le Mans 24 hours for real, the great Mario Andretti once opined that had Newman hung up his acting career and gone racing full time, he could have been a world champion, so prodigious was his talent.
No acting needed for real drama
However, the title of best motor racing documentary for this year must surely go to Prost, which you can track down on BBC iPlayer (not that I'm suggesting you could use a VPN to do so or anything...).
Prost's career was astonishing, leading to four F1 world titles and a famously venomous personal war with Ayrton Senna. Often, Prost himself uses the series to drag up old enmities and perceived slights, but it's also fascinating to see behind the scenes of an often-private man's life, not to mention catching up on some awesome 1980s F1 action.
There's a final trap-door moment which makes this series unmissable, though. It's towards the end when Prost has spoken at length about how viciously he and Senna fought with each other, but also how they patched things up and actually became true friends in the all-too-brief few months between Prost's last F1 race and Senna's tragic, violent death at the San Marino Grand Prix.
Prost says that he's moved on from his career and doesn't keep any memorabilia, but as he does so, you can clearly see - resplendent in its unmissable yellow and green livery - one of Ayrton's helmets on the shelf behind him. Not a dry eye in the house.
Now THAT'S an Oscar moment.