What’s the magic behind the racing scenes in “Ferrari?”

Sure, there’s CGI, but when it comes to movies like “Ferrari,” much of what you see consists of real cars, with real drivers, doing extraordinary things. Who’s the man behind all those car stunts? Robert Nagle, the Academy Award winner who served as the film’s stunt coordinator.

The Cars

Why not CGI for everything? Simply put, it just doesn’t work for a movie like “Ferrari.”

“As long as the principal subject matter is real, you can start manipulating the peripheral with CG,” says Robert. “Your eye doesn’t pick that up and it blends in very nicely. Where we run into trouble is when we start making our focus point, subject matter, CG. It doesn’t quite look right; your eye knows there’s something wrong.”

So in movies like “Ferrari,” most of the time the cars you see in the film are actual cars. And while you might see real-deal vehicles from that period in the background, the principal cars are indeed replicas.

“The real examples [of Ferraris and Maseratis] were in the price range of $30 to $50 million a copy,” he says, “so we couldn’t take those and run them flat-out down the road. We had to build our own versions.”

The film created period race cars based off the Caterham Seven 620. The car comes with a supercharged 2.0-liter Ford Duratec putting out 300-plus horsepower. It weighs just 1345 pounds. To get the modern-day Caterhams looking like 1950s Ferraris and Maseratis required some additional fabrication. Auto Action Developments Ltd. in the U.K. built the cars, while Campana in Italy did the bodywork. Robert oversaw the entire process.

“We cut the frames and made them fit the wheelbase we needed,” explains Robert. “We duplicated the real bodies. At the end of the day, it was probably the best picture cars I have ever driven. They look the part, they drive the part and they worked flawlessly from start to finish.”

The four-cylinder engines in the Caterhams didn’t sound the part of the Maseratis and Ferraris, though. “We had to record the real cars and that gets put in in post,” Robert explains. “Moreover, the Ferraris were V12s and the Maseratis were V8s, so you have different tones. How those tones interact–even sound stuff starts to become complex.”

Robert adds that the cars topped out at about 120 mph. That may not seem superfast for today, and these movie cars did use modern powertrains, but keep in mind what replicating the cars involved.

“We’re running on period tires–the tread is only 6 inches wide,” he says. “They were speed-rated to 130, so we had to keep the speed down.”

The seasoned stunt drivers in the film don’t typically drive 1950s-era sports cars. “It definitely makes for a different animal,” Robert says. “The biggest comment was the tires, while not super grippy, were very predictable. That’s what you want in a race car: predictability. That gives you confidence.”

The Stars

Drivers behind the wheel of the on-screen cars included experienced stunt drivers such as Derek Hill (Formula 1 champion Phil Hill’s son), Ben Collins (the original Stig of “Top Gear”), Samuel Hubinette (Formula D champion) and Marino Franchitti (Indy 500 winner Dario’s brother). Most of the film’s stunt drivers have racing backgrounds, including Robert, but good racers don’t necessarily make good stunt drivers.

“It’s a similar skill set but a different discipline,” Robert explains. “It’s refining that skill set and being able to make small adjustments to how you drive the car and being able to repeat that over and over again. Sometimes you don’t do things that look like they would in a real race, because it doesn’t look right on camera or it doesn’t look dynamic. We have to make little, subtle changes in how we drive the cars, the line we drive–all of that has to shift a little bit to make it more interesting.”

Robert offers one common example of driving for the camera rather than driving for a race. “Imagine two cars drafting down the road at high speed,” he says. “If you’re the car that’s drafting, you’re going to be tucked in behind the car in front of you, as close as you can. But if the camera’s looking at those cars coming at them, it doesn’t look dynamic and all you really see is the lead car. So we have to open that gap up and stagger them a little bit and then have some movement in that window so that it looks like they’re doing something and not going too far with that so it looks goofy.”

Robert also coaches the actors who have little to no experience behind the wheel of a race car. That included Gabriel Leone, who plays race car driver Alfonso de Portago, and Jack O’Connell, who plays driver Peter Collins.

“We had to start from ground zero,” Robert explains. “Whenever they were available, we would get to the track and we would work with them for 4 or 5 hours a day and slowly get their skill set up to par. Just dealing with some simple moves–to drive a car into frame on a camera to a specific stop mark repeatedly–sounds simple. But when you’re talking about the car repeatedly landing within an inch or 2 of where the director wants it, it becomes a task. It was giving them a skill set to do things that simple up to feeling comfortable tearing out of a spot at speed–just doing it with confidence and authority so they really looked the part.”

Then you get the best of both worlds with someone like Patrick Dempsey, who plays Piero Taruffi. Dempsey is an award-winning actor who has podiumed at world-class events such as Daytona and Le Mans.

“[Patrick] brought a fantastic skill set–he nailed it,” says Robert. “It was nice working with someone who could drive to that level and understood the camera.”

The Biscuit Jr.

Remember old TV shows and films that used a rear projection of a moving background while the actors pretended to drive in a car? Well, we’ve come a long way from that. Today, The Biscuit Jr. helps simulate a vehicle moving at speed while the actors perform within it. Robert, a degreed engineer, and Allan Padelford, also a stunt driver in “Ferrari,” came up with The Biscuit Jr. Together they won an Academy Award for technical achievement in 2015.

“It’s a rig we can use to put actors in the middle of this mix, at speed, and just let them do their acting and not have to worry about driving,” Robert explains. “It’s a drivable platform that will do 150 mph. We can strap a car down to it or what we call a buck, which is an empty car–just the body and the interior–to the bed of this and send it down the road. We have a stunt driver driving it off camera. Now you can put cameras all around this vehicle that looks like the real car and photograph the actor driving.”

“I’ve ridden in it, and it can be a little unnerving when you’re not in the driver’s seat,” Robert admits. “Even though you’re sitting in a seat behind a steering wheel with pedals and a shifter, it does nothing, so you’re along for the ride. It’s a little bit of a mental game to get past that. That being said, we do a fair amount of training with [the actors] so they understand what’s happening. So when we put them in that situation, they’re completely comfortable.”

The Stunt Driver and Stunt Coordinator

What exactly does a stunt coordinator do? Coordinate stunts, of course. Well, there’s more to it than that. Much more. The stunt coordinator often becomes a sort of dance choreographer, but instead of the people doing moves, there are drivers doing moves with vehicles.

“There’s a misconception that we’re just a bunch of crazy guys who jump in cars and do crazy stuff,” Robert asserts. “There’s hours and hours of planning and preparation and choreography. It’s so detailed. This guy has to be at this spot at this moment, that guy has to be at that spot at that moment, and that marriage of all this coming together is a big undertaking. Sometimes I will be on the radio calling out cues based on time or the timing of move A into move B. I have a certain cadence to get to the next cue. There’s a lot of layers. When it all comes together, it looks great.”

The stunt coordinator helps the director, in this case Michael Mann, achieve their vision for a film.

“It varies some project to project, meaning how much creative involvement I have,” Robert says. “A lot of it is just translating from what’s in the script into action. Then, how do I make that practical and possible? You know, trying to keep everything grounded in the realm of reality.”

Robert has worked on a wide range of films. He performed as stunt driver on Marvel movies such as “Venom,” a couple installments of the “Fast & Furious” film franchise, and even on the TV series “Star Trek: Picard.” As stunt coordinator, he oversaw stunts in “Ford v. Ferrari” and “Baby Driver.”

A historical film like “Ferrari” has different demands than a more fantasy-based Marvel film, which relies more heavily on special effects. A historical film even requires a different approach than another film Robert contributed to, “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.”

“The Mille Miglia is such a unique race–it’s a 1000-mile loop through Italy,” says Robert. “I start with [asking] how would this race work versus a sprint race at Willow Springs? It’s completely different. It’s a matter of getting into the driver’s mindset. How would they approach it? How would the [car] constructors approach it? How do we make it exciting but not outside the realm of reality? It was an ongoing conversation with Michael Mann and getting what he sees in his mind and translating that into actual action.”

“It was me reading books about this era and understanding the drivers,” he says, “looking at as many images as I could to get a sense of what these cars were, what the terrain was like, what these guys had to deal with.”

“There’s an incredible piece we shot for the Mille Miglia that was in the mountains of Italy called the Gran Sasso,” says Robert. “It was just stunning. To watch these red cars at speed running through the hills there was just breathtaking.”

“When the audience walks away feeling exhilarated and the action marries up and follows the storyline and it’s seamless–because one doesn’t stand without the other,” says Robert. “When all that comes together and people really enjoy the experience, I feel like we’ve done our job.”