I chuckled the instant I saw Craig Federighi driving an F1 race car during the opening sequence of WWDC 2025. The whole gag got better as the video revealed that Tim Cook was the race engineer, and Federighi’s car was racing on the roof of Apple’s iconic HQ building.
It was all a big promo for the upcoming Apple TV+ movie F1 starring Brad Pitt. The film will hit theaters before heading to streaming and is guaranteed to be a blockbuster summer flick.
The clever marketing trick is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and it’s something only a tech company that runs its own movie production studio can pull off. You need this particular type of film paired with a big event like WWDC to come up with the brilliant Craig Federighi race driver gag.
It turns out the folks running Apple’s marketing team for F1 had another idea to get everyone talking about the movie, without actually focusing on Brad Pitt and Damson Idris’s characters, the story, or how director Joseph Kosinski shot the amazing Formula 1 sequences.
Apple created a unique F1 trailer that only iPhone users can truly enjoy. It’s a haptic trailer hosted on Apple TV+ that makes your iPhone tremble in sync with the action on the screen. You’ll feel the Formula 1 car racing on the track as the iPhone delivers every vibration to your hands.
The F1 haptic trailer is something only Apple can pull off right now. The company controls all the pieces of the puzzle. F1 is an Apple movie, coming to theaters and then to Apple TV+. Apple has the platforms (Apple TV+ and iOS) and the hardware (iPhone) to create a trailer experience that’s unlike anything else out there.
To see the special clip, you’ll need to open the Apple TV app on your iPhone, look for the F1 movie, and watch the haptic trailer (or follow this link). The phone will start vibrating in sync with the sound, whether it’s an F1 race car roaring on the track or Brad Pitt’s character bouncing a ping pong ball.
The experience isn’t available anywhere else. You might think a YouTube version of the trailer could pull off the same haptic effect, but that’s not how it works. You need the Apple TV app to enjoy the vibrations.
You’ll find reactions to the F1 haptic trailer on YouTube, like the short below where the creator silences the sound of the iPhone so viewers can hear the vibrations in tune with the trailer. The iPhone’s vibrations sound like a Formula 1 car racing on the track.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple and other companies try to repeat this marketing gimmick with future projects. But you need the right kind of content to make it work. F1 is a movie about racing Formula 1 cars, so it naturally offers the kind of sound that translates well into iPhone vibrations.
Director Joseph Kosinski shot lots of racing footage for the movie rather than relying on special effects. That’s exactly what we’d expect from a director who put actors inside fighter jets to film the flying sequences of Top Gun: Maverick.
The F1 marketing trick works even better now that we know the movie is quite fun. Early reactions to F1 tease a massive success for Apple this summer, the kind Apple TV+ probably needs.
Haptic trailers aside, F1 hits theaters on June 27th. It’ll play on Apple TV+ once its theatrical run wraps up.
