The Stunts of Ford v Ferrari: Recreating the Racing Action of the 1966 Le Mans (W/Video)

"You can do the same stunt five times and have different results. When physics take over … who knows what could happen?" That's according to Robert Nagle, who, in his role of stunt coordinator forFordvFerrari, orchestrated cars going wheel to wheel in racetrack combat—and occasionally flying through the air. The film transports audiences back to the 1966 running of Le Mans, portraying the personal and mechanical battles team Shelby American fought as they worked to secure victory against seemingly indomitable Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans with their Ford GT40.

At the behest of director James Mangold, Nagle enlisted a team that could execute stunts and maneuvers to convincingly re-create the perils of the race. To dutifully tell the story of Carroll Shelby (portrayed by Matt Damon) and Ken Miles (characterized by Christian Bale), he'd need cars and drivers that could perform on the edge.

Those vehicles included classic Corvettes, Shelby Cobras, rebodied Porsche 911s, and tube-frame replicas of Ford GT40s and Ferrari 330 P3s running LS3 V-8 engines. Compared to the modern cars Nagle worked with on productions such asBaby Driveror theFast & Furiousfranchise, the ones used forFord v Ferrariwere intentionally stripped down and raw. "The biggest difference, and a plus for us, is that there weren't any electronic safety devices making the cars try to save themselves," he said. "They were pure cars; everything that happened with them was up to the driver. And that's why I recruited the drivers I did: I knew they would be more capable of handling that."

Derek Hill, the Daytona 24 Hour and Sebring 12 Hour class winner and son of Le Mans and Formula 1 icon Phil Hill, was one of those stunt drivers. He attributes his ability to drive for the camera to his motorsports experience. "Ultimately it's the same principles," he said, but, "What the limit is on a racetrack and what the limit is for the camera are very different."

Although safety concerns—and the need for camera cars to keep up—make it rare that stunt drivers go flat-out, the goal is always to make things look realistic and exciting. "We've got to follow our cues and hit our marks, but also give it some action," Hill said. "We might try and make the car move around more than it would on a racetrack at that speed. You have to be precise on a racetrack, but it's a different sort of precision on a movie set—driving within inches of a camera car or keeping in sequence with other stunt drivers to set up a shot."

Read the MotorTrend review of Ford v Ferrarihere.

Rallycross and drift racing champion Tanner Foust also brought his skills to the production. "Virtually all of the drivers involved had race experience, which is a lot different than stunt driving experience," Foust said. "That, along with real speed, makes a big difference in doing something practically and not having to alter it in post-production—we know that viewers can see the difference."

Nagle agreed: "Depending on what the stunt is, I'm looking for certain talent. Drivers need to make the car look like it's doing something because a smooth, fast car doesn't always look exciting—the drivers need to work with it to telegraph excitement to the audience."

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To that end, Nagle relied on post-production effects as little as possible. "Your eye knows the difference," he said. "If there's something in the deep background or a car in a very precarious spot, that's a different story. But for the principal action, what you're focused on, I do everything I can to make it real."

As such, high speeds were a necessity. "On the Daytona straightaways we were doing at least 160 mph," Nagle said. "For the shot at Le Mans' Mulsanne Straight, speeds approached 185 mph. That's the realism I wanted and the realism James Mangold wanted. If we want a scene to look fast, it's better if we drive fast."

Although trained stunt drivers bring awesome skills to a movie set, selecting legitimate race drivers forFord v Ferraritook the production to a higher level. "I can't say there's a massive difference between what experienced stunt drivers and race drivers can bring to a scene," Hill said. "But there's that unknown quality, that certain something which makes race drivers so comfortable in a track environment. They know exactly how to place the car, exactly what line to follow and what maneuver to take."

Foust agrees. "With this film being so story-driven," he said, "how we interacted with each other on the track was much more of a factor. Where we were positioned and how quickly we closed on or passed each other was really part of the story, especially around what happened with Ken Miles and his climb to the front."

Finding places that were capable of supporting the race sequences was a challenge for Nagle. "If we were going to shoot two cars racing side by side, we had to have a third lane for a camera car, too. Those are the types of things that get overlooked," he said.

Primary filming locations included Willow Springs raceway, where Ken Miles made his mark in sports car racing, and Agua Dulce airport in California, spacious enough to erect Le Mans home stretch grandstands. Also, as today's Le Mans looks nothing like it did in 1966, back roads in rural Georgia were a stand-in for the Mulsanne Straight through the French countryside.

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"Finding a road that was wide and straight enough with convincing topography was quite a thing," Nagle said. "Increasing the challenge is that these roads aren't always as smooth as I would like them to be. Sometimes there are undulations or contours where if the car starts sliding, it's going to go right off—that's a huge concern for me."

Achieving a balance between safety and realism is key to a successful production. Foust noted how the cars made that difficult. "The biggest problem we had was running these old-school tires in the rain," he said. "They were dry-weather tires, but if we were shooting a wet scene, there wasn't time to change all the tires on all the cars. When we were shooting in Agua Dulce, there were 500 extras in the Le Mans grandstands. Driving past at 100 mph in the wet … there was a lot of pressure to keep the car in line with all those people around. My experience helped me read where the water was deep or shallow, so I was ready for it. But I had to work pretty hard to keep things controlled. That was one of the scarier nights of shooting that I recall."

Still, get a group of competitive and skilled drivers behind the wheels of powerful sports cars, and things are bound to get exciting. "Generally, we're not trying to push the car to the limit, but we try and create the look of action—not like we're just out for a Sunday drive," Hill said. "At one point I was driving a GT40 next to Tanner. Our instructions were to drive into a corner as fast and tight as we could then exit and split the camera. Race drivers like to push each other, and over the takes for that shot, things got a little dicey," he laughed.

Things got particularly dicey in one of the initial stunts of the Le Mans sequence, in which a red and blue Ferrari 275 GTB goes somersaulting through the air then smashes into pieces on impact with the track. "That's not computer graphics—that was real," Foust said. "They had a giant truck with the car loaded on a cannon, like a tank with a huge piston. That guy literally drove alongside us on the track, at our speed, and then triggered the piston, which brought his truck to a complete stop. That launched the car forward through the air."

Hill drove the GT40 following closely behind that flying Ferrari, and he had to use his racing instincts to make the shot work. From take to take, no one could predict what the car might do in the air or when it hit the ground. "What do you want me to do?" Hill asked the directors. Their reply: "Do what you would do in a race—that's why you're here." For Hill, it became a matter of avoiding wrecked car parts, camera gear, and other stunt drivers. "I ended up having to throw the car off the track and pull it out of a ditch before I hit a tire wall," he said. "But I like that stuff. It creates authentic, unexpected action, which is what directors and viewers like."

Nagle said that stunt was a huge undertaking. "I had a high-speed camera vehicle built specifically for it. We did two takes, and there are pieces from each in the film because some aspects worked better than others. In the second take, that Ferrari actually righted itself and T-boned the camera car, which slammed into a concrete barrier and a tire wall. It was a very severe impact, but the driver ended up fine."

Nagle admitted that he's not fazed by seeing beautiful sports cars bashed to bits for the sake of cinema: "There was a time when it would have bugged me, but I think I've become a bit jaded with all the cars wrecks I've been involved with."

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Retaining continuity and accuracy was another massive focus for the team. "There were historical points that had to be correct, like how the cars crossed the line in a one-two-three format," Foust said. "Wearing all of the actual period gear, helmets, and gloves, plus driving cars that weren't remarkably friendly or particularly comfortable, made it a lot like how driving an old race car would probably feel.

"How the cars looked was important too," Foust continued. "Each scene would have an hour number. If it was hour two of the race, then the cars would be fairly clean, but the next shot might be hour 20. So all the cars would have to come in and get completely dirtied up as if they've been driving overnight. Then the next shot might be hour five, so they'd all have to get cleaned again for that. There was so much done to keep continuity between shots and locations."

The stunt crew provided driving for the most intense sequences, but leading actors Matt Damon and Christian Bale spent time behind the wheel, too. "Christian was hands-down the best actor I've ever trained to drive," Nagle said. "He did an amazing, amazing job." The production team wanted the acclaimed method actor to get a sense of what it means to be a race car driver, so he was sent to Bob Bondurant racing school.

For Nagle, the benefits were twofold. "I guided the training to what I needed, but I also wanted Christian to meet Bob. He's an icon from that era and is actually named in the film. So we'd do driving instruction in the morning, then we'd spend four or five hours every afternoon talking to Bob about his experience. One thing I didn't know is that Bob and Ken Miles were close friends—the insight we got from that was amazing. Christian learned a lot about who Miles was from Bob."

Retelling the epic story of the 1966 Le Mans and the heroic drivers behind it was the mission for everyone involved in the film. Hill expounded on why he thinks it's an important story to remember: "Motor racing is full of endless good stories to be told. But this one happens to be one that the public, especially the public who's not interested in racing, can align with. We all know what Ford is, and we all know what Ferrari is. Who's to say what people's perceptions are of each, but to see a brand that one wouldn't necessarily associate with racing at its best, going out to take on a truly exotic and established racing brand like Ferrari, is one that people might enjoy watching."

Foust had a similar opinion. "This movie is about an era when the performance of race cars and the speeds they could achieve were vastly outgrowing the safety measures being taken in the cars and out on the track," he said. "That was a time when every racer knew someone who had died racing. These guys were gladiators—they lived an amazing life, but at that time the pay didn't outweigh the danger, so I have to imagine they were truly riding the wave of their passion and competitive spirits, which makes it very human."

Indeed,Ford v Ferrarirevolves around cars but focuses on people. "We're in an era where it's probably easier to raise money to start an autonomous race series than it is to start a series with actual drivers," Foust said. "And from a business case, as part of our inevitable future, it's more valuable to promote technology that eliminates the driver. But at this point, just like in the movie, racing relies on the human in the seat."

Between stunt-packed driving sequences,Ford v Ferrarireminds viewers of the intrinsic human motivation to overcome adversity and find victory.

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