Why would car-racing movies not care about featuring racial diversity?

Beautiful actress has been cut out entirely from a blockbuster. An up-and-coming actor was a wall flower with no line in another game-based movie. Both were supposed to be in car racing films. And both were people of colour.

Actress Simone Ashley (right) was removed from the recently released film, F1, completely, though she attended all press events and promotions for the film. Photo cropped from promotional film.

The movie F1, featuring Brad Pitt as the renegade speed car racer, made headlines for a very bizarre move. The film, directed by Joseph Kosinski, who directed another worldwide box office hit, Top Gun: Maverick, has completely removed scenes featuring actress Simone Ashley. Ashley was supposed to appear as the love interest of Joshua Pearce, played by fellow British actor Damson Idris. Deletion is nothing unusual in Hollywood I guess, until you see the very final, final cut in the theatres but what made this case exceptionally embarrassing was that Ashley had been on all press ops to promote the film long before it was on the cinemas. She even showed up at the premiere — maybe still hoping it was a good photo op. But to me, it looked pretty disrespectful. The director later said he would love to work with the talented actress again, but I am not that impressed.

Only Kosinski can tell the exact reason to the removal, but I think what he said – the storyline had to be trimmed, and non-Brad Pitt -loving characters were subject to the restructuring – might just be correct in its face value.

Still, what slightly upsets me is that this is not the first time a Hollywood-produced racing film has shrunken the presence of Asian characters in its final product – yes, Simone Ashley is Indian British.

In 2023, I watched the film Gran Turismo, which also features race cars, and saw Korean actor Sang Heon Lee’s character of Joo-Hwan Lee brushed out. This time, Lee was not a love interest, but one of the main competitor-fellow racers of the main character Jann Mardenborough. Lee only appeared a couple of times – sorry if it is a bit more than that, which I don’t think makes a huge difference in my context here – and all through the time I wondered why.

And second time seeing this, with Ashely, I began to wonder why Asian characters are omitted. To be broader in context, people with colour are featured less. And I didn’t want to tag everyone in the film industry, at least the decision makers, to be groundlessly racists.

So I asked ChatGPT to come up with a list of standout Hollywood car-racing movies, then searched on Google to see their cast.

Below are the results:

🎬 Ford v Ferrari (2019): None Asian in the Google’s showcase of cast (top 43).

🎥 Rush (2013): None Asian in the main or standout supporting roles. Google notes that three Japanese characters were featured. (I watched the film quite some time ago and don’t recall any impressive characters of colour.)

🚗 Days of Thunder (1990): No Asian actors in prominent roles. Can see one Asian and two black actors in minor rows.

🏁 Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006): Seems like there is one Filipino American actor amongst the top 27 cast members.

🏆 Gran Turismo (2023): Has Sang Heon Lee as one of the top seven cast members. However, I didn’t hear him say a word in the film. The lead actor Archie Madekwe is of Nigerian descendant (representing the real character who inspired the film).

There are more, but I erased those that do not show car racing (competitions). I also deleted some non-fiction content or those produced before the 1990s just because, yes, I am cutting some slacks to producers who have less sensitive touch towards racial representations in the showbiz. And here are the five, excluding the F1 film.

And here, trying to fathom the logic behind so little representation of Asians in such films.

Here’s my theory, and then refutations.

1.       The Asian market is small in the racing industry: According to industry analysts, the Asia-Pacific Region accounts for 11.7% of the motorsport market that encompasses China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and others. It is smaller than those in Europe or North America, but still the film does not feature that much portion in such films.

2.       There is little investment into the racing: From Japanese firms such as Honda, Panasonic, Casio (Edifice), Yokohama, to Chinese (BYD for the electric vehicle racing), and Petronas (Malaysia), there are substantial portion of Asian funding into F1 races. There are more, if you aim to go beyond F1. There are some Japanese characters in these films, but I don’t think there are enough.

Just by searching cast members of some famous race car films, I was able to see some change and tiny efforts to be inclusive and diverse in the racing films lately. But it is not enough. The film cast are just way too white.

There are claims that F1 is vying to advance to Asian market: F1 has tapped China, Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia, but have not managed to retain its presence. If the sport truly wants to grow, it has to go beyond race calendars and look at representation too — including how it shows up in globally distributed films. Also not to forget that China, Japan, Korea, India and other countries in Asia take No.1, 2, 3 and 6 in the top 20 International Box Office Market. The market deserves rightful representation -- now.

#diversityforF1films, #F1film, #simoneashley, #sangheonlee, #diversity, #inclusion