Let’s just get this out of the way: F1: The Movie is a solid sports movie. It’s big, shiny, dramatic, and delivers exactly what it promises: Brad Pitt looking cool in a racing suit while Formula 1 teams (and egos) spin around him at 200 mph. The racing is thrilling and the sound design is phenomenal. The whole thing plays like a cinematic highlight reel of high-stakes motorsport. And most importantly, afterward, I felt like I wanted to race my Kia around the theater’s parking lot.

But once I got past the spectacle, I started to realize something: Damson Idris is the one holding this entire thing down.

Brad Pitt might be the veteran driver, the name above the title, and the face in every trailer. But it’s Damson who brings the soul and the spark. He walks into this film as a so-called “rookie,” but ends up being the emotional engine of the whole story. And quite frankly, he should’ve been the lead.

The movie follows Sonny Hayes (Pitt), a retired driver pulled back into the F1 world to mentor rising star Joshua Pearce (Idris) as they both race for fictional team APXGP. If you’ve seen a sports movie in the last 20 years, you know the blueprint: aging legend, promising prodigy, clashing egos, and, of course, eventual mutual respect.

But Idris adds some new layers to his trope. He’s an ambitious mama’s boy who’s fully believable as a Gen-Z driver navigating fame, pressure and legacy in real time. His confidence doesn’t overwhelm the performance and his vulnerability never feels forced. He brings a presence to this event movie that made me want to see more from him.

Every time Idris is on screen, you care more. You remember there’s something human beneath the carbon fiber and champagne.

Brad Pitt is doing the Brad Pitt thing here: relaxed charm, a little scruff, sly smiles under a helmet, wooing the ladies, you know what it is. The film tries to frame his return to racing as emotionally weighty, but the real emotional pull comes from watching Idris step into a cutthroat world that wasn’t built for him—and own it anyway.

The film is performing incredibly well, pulling in over $100 million on its opening weekend. And if a sequel or spinoff is on the table, I know exactly where I want it to go: follow Josh Pearce.

I want to see how this young driver handles sudden fame and the internal doubt that creeps in when you’re no longer the underdog, but the one everyone’s watching. I want to watch him rise, fall and come back even stronger. And most of all, I want Damson Idris to get the leading role he’s more than earned. (Have you seen him in Snowfall? The man is a powerhouse!)

F1: The Movie might have been Brad Pitt’s passion project, but it’s Idris’s performance that stays with you, long after Pitt’s character is off racing a dune buggy in the end credits.

So if you walked out of F1 wondering, Wait… why wasn’t this movie about Damson Idris instead?—you’re not alone.

Next time, let Brad ride shotgun. (Sorry, terrible F1 metaphor. But you get it.)