Beyond the 59 car entry for the 2024 Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona there are no fewer than seven other cars in the WeatherTech Championship paddock that will contribute to this event becoming likely the most widely seen race weekend in IMSA history.
That’s because the paddock is also hosting a late contingent of cars destined for other starring or supporting roles in the forthcoming (and as yet untitled) movie directed by Joseph Kosinski and starring Brad Pitt and Damson Idris, best known to this point as having filmed extensively in and around the paddocks and on circuit at the British Grand Prix in 2023.
Pitt has been confirmed to DSC as attending at some point this weekend at Daytona by sources close to the production.
As exclusively revealed by Marshall Pruett and expanded upon in last week’s edition of #TWISC, The Week In Sportscars podcast, the scenes set to be filed at Daytona see Brad Pitt’s character, Sonny Hayes involved in a run in the Daytona 24 Hours in a Wright Motorsports-run Porsche 911 GT3 R, this a strand of a story in the movie understood to reflect Pitt’s character’s career after a major incident in F1, before being recalled to Formula One to assist the development of a new and rising talent (played by Idris).
The primary film car (pictured top) is housed in the main pit garages alongside the #120 Wright Motorsports GTD entry and sees the car feature a ‘driver squad of Sonny Hayes, C.Kelso and the very real-life P. Long! The car is fitted with several internal cameras.
The scale of the production on display at Daytona is impressive with no fewer than six race cars dedicated to filming or reserve filming duties including four Wright Motorsports Porsches, three of which are fully liveried, in identical colours and numbering to the #120 car actually entered into the race proper.
That, presumably, means that with some CGI post-production we may well see some actual race footage in the finished movie.
The fourth Wright Porsche is in a black base livery and is understood to be a reserve car (seen in the centre of this pic between two reserve Geico-liveried Porsches).
There are a pair of Turner Motorsport BMW M4 GT3s also dedicated to filming too, again identically liveried to the team’s Rolex 24 entry and housed away from the teams’ race effort proper.
The final race car on site for filming is a pretty extraordinary one – a 2000 vintage Lola B2K/ 10 LMP900 car with an active high/ low level camera mount on the rear of the car set to be used for high speed tracking shots.
The film car’s pit garage, and one of the Wright haulers both feature full branding for the fictitious ‘Chip Hart Racing’ effort too.
All pics copyright Dailysportscar/ Graham Goodwin
