Near the beginning of F1, veteran racer Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) is forced to endure a brief meet-and-greet with Peter Banning, a cardboard-stereotype corporate villain played with relish by English stage veteran Tobias Menzies. “I’ve caught up on all the Drive To Survive episodes,” Banning says, and the audience is meant to understand that he is therefore not an authentic fan of the sport. However, there’s no small amount of irony to this because without Drive to Survive, there would be absolutely zero case to make a $300 million movie about auto racing. Want a little more irony? Here it is: F1, for all its earnest effort, is quite a bit less entertaining than the nonfiction Netflix show that built its audience.

A better, and fairer, comparison would be with Sylvester Stallone’s 2001 box-office dud Driven, mainly because the two films’ plots are uncomfortably similar. The absurd and impossible scenario of bringing a 50-something-year-old driver out of retirement to work with a headstrong and arrogant rookie? Check. A nearly effortless march up the team standings? Of course. A business manager whose advice nearly kills the rookie’s career? Yes! A final race in which the old racer sacrifices his chances for the young one, then enters a state of grace in which the world goes silent and he can finally drive the way he always knew he could? Why not? F1 is so dependent on Stallone’s reviled effort that it makes The Magnificent Seven look like a clean-sheet project.