Reel Racing: Looking Back at 2025’s Racing Movies

Usually, I kick each new year off with my first Reel Racing article recapping which racing movies came out the year prior. This time around, it’s a little late, but as always, I’ll give a quick ranking with some thoughts on each.

1. F1

F1 hit movie theaters over the summer, and if I didn’t need to be more responsible with my money, I probably would’ve seen it five or six times. I’d been looking forward to this for years, ever since the news broke that director Joseph Kosinski would helm the project.

This was on the heels of Top Gun: Maverick, one of my favorite movies of the decade and one of the best action films on a technical level in … I don’t know how long.

And F1 delivered.

It’s superb on all technical levels, incorporating a lot of innovation with camera placement like Maverick did. Sure, the plot is pretty formulaic (pun intended), but I was just happy to see motorsports on a big, big screen again.

It takes its liberties, but literally any movie about a sport will do that, and that’s a good thing. As I said last week, nobody wants to see APXGP hit the grid and run 21st and 22nd every week. Sonny Hayes intentionally messing with race outcomes is wildly fun to watch.

Brad Pitt and the rest of the performances are fine, but the racing scenes are incredible. And that opening scene in the 24 Hours of Daytona just kicks so much ass — right up there with the “I Lied To You” performance in Sinners as one of my favorite scenes of the year. Somehow, it’s the best part of a movie about Formula 1. Go figure.

F1 scored four Oscar nominations at the 98th Academy Awards and won for Best Film Editing. We love to see it.

Just keeping my fingers crossed the rumored Days of Thunder sequel comes to fruition, ideally with Jerry Bruckheimer and Joseph Kosinski involved.

2. Earnhardt

Amazon debuted a docuseries centered around Dale Earnhardt over the summer. Directed by Joshua Altman, who I sat down with ahead of the series’ premiere, Earnhardt is a four-part journey through Earnhardt’s life with plenty of interviews from those around him.

This is easily the definitive chronicle of “The Intimidator” and his career.

Altman, for his part, did an excellent job directing the series. His past work included editing Minding the Gap, which scored an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature (and is also excellent).

Any other year, this would probably be No. 1 on the list. It’s basically a tie between this and F1 for 2025, but the fact that F1 did so well and brought racing to a mainstream movie audience — along with all the technical aspects that made it great — gives it the edge; slightly. Probably even closer of a margin than the finish spotlighted in a documentary farther down this list.

3. American Thunder: NASCAR to Le Mans

Everyone remembers the absolute roar of the Garage 56 entry at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2023. American Thunder: NASCAR to Le Mans chronicles NASCAR’s journey to the circuit in France, from the idea’s conceptualization to choosing the drivers and testing at various tracks across the country.

Jimmie Johnson, Jenson Button and Mike Rockenfeller eventually became the three drivers chosen for the task, and the documentary features a ton of behind-the-scenes footage with them and Chad Knaus.

It’s a really solid racing doc that ranks up there with the best of them, taking us through a truly fascinating journey for an unprecedented project.

4. So Damn Close: Atlanta ’24

This is the close finish I was talking about … it’s almost as close as my 1-2 ranking of F1 and Earnhardt.

So Damn Close: Atlanta ’24 is a FOX Sports documentary chronicling the three-wide, .003-second-margin finish between Daniel Suarez, Kyle Busch and Ryan Blaney at Atlanta Motor Speedway early in the 2024 season.

There’s not much to write home about with this documentary. I did like it quite a bit, but that stems from how it’s presented. The crews brought the three central trios — drivers Suarez, Busch and Blaney; crew chiefs Matt Swiderski, Randall Burnett and Jonathan Hassler; and spotters Frankie Kimmel, Derek Kneeland and Tim Fedewa — into a movie theater to rewatch the race highlights and the finish.

I really enjoyed the back-and-forth between each trio in terms of their areas of expertise and viewpoints on the finish. Good stuff.

5. The Seat

For the most part, I didn’t dislike any of the racing-themed productions that came out last year. I didn’t necessarily dislike The Seat, either, but it’s probably the one that did the least for me.

Director Kyle Thrash’s other sports projects are Maybe Next Year and The Turnaround, respectively an Eagles-themed documentary and Phillies-themed documentary short (the latter also produced by Netflix).

The Seat is Thrash’s first non-Philadelphia-centric production, documenting the Mercedes F1 team’s search for a second driver after Lewis Hamilton‘s departure.

Of course, Mercedes eventually landed on Kimi Antonelli. This documentary isn’t bad; it just didn’t generate a huge impact for me.

My other issue lies in the kind-of-blatant sponsorship of WhatsApp, which backs the Mercedes team and is what almost every single text conversation or video call is held over in this documentary. Just felt very corporate and way too sponsor-y.

That said, it’s not awful, just kind of monotonous.

Those were the five motorsports productions that came out in 2025 that I ended up seeing. I don’t rank miniseries or short films (The Seat is 40 minutes) in my yearly list, but for context, F1 is second, American Thunder is 32nd and So Damn Close is 42nd out of 60 movies.

The caveat is that I at least liked the top 45 movies on that list, so their lower position doesn’t mean they were bad.

Here’s to more racing movies in 2026. I’ll be checking any and all releases out, and we’ll take a look at what might be releasing in a couple weeks.