Photographs, interview and video by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER

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I’ve arrived in Watkins Glen in upstate New York at dawn on a July weekend. It may look like a sleepy rural town but the main drag used to echo with the revs of car engines from 1948 to 1952, as sports cars raced through the streets on a 6.6 mile course. The danger of the sport and the risk to onlookers forced the building of a proper track, the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Course, which is where I’m heading today with Nicholas Hoult as he runs laps in a Ferrari 296 Challenge car as part of his training to ultimately parlay a passion to actually race. Though he’s busy with on-screen work – his latest, The Order, is premiering at this year’s Venice Film Festival – Nick is feeling the need for speed.

Actors have been drawn to racing for decades; from James Dean, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen to James Garner, Patrick Dempsey and Michael Fassbender. Nick recalls listening to Clint Eastwood talk about Newman as a racer. ‘He told me that he went to the track with Paul Newman one time, because he lived up in Northern California – he said that was fun, having a few beers with him.’ However, it wasn’t Eastwood who inspired Nick to turn a childhood fascination into a serious vocation, nor his About a Boy producer, Eric Fellner, who gave the 12-year-old child actor his first ride in a 550 Maranello. This was also the film where we first met. ‘I’ve always been excited by racing – I grew up watching F1 with my dad,’ Nick recalls as we head to the track. ‘That was our tradition on a Sunday. You’d make your cheese and pickle sandwich, and then sit down and watch the F1. Then I got a couple of little chances to get on a track and try things out. I was working with Michael Fassbender on the X-Men movies, and he started to do the Ferrari challenge. I was excited to learn about it because whenever you think about racing, Ferrari is the brand that’s synonymous with it, in every form of racing. And the cars are just magic. So to get a chance to get out on a track in one of their race cars, and to then learn how to do it properly – I’m someone who likes to try new things, and challenge myself.’

As a performer who’s moved from child actor to leading man, he’s used to bending to the needs of a director, challenging himself to portray different characters in varied genres. But racing is something that can’t be approximated. ‘For an actor, you can kind of fake it until you make it in lots of things,’ he explains. ‘And then people will make you look good in the film, whether it’s holding a sword or whatever it is. You do it to the best of your ability, and then practice, and practice, and hopefully it works on film. In racing, there’s the engineers and your coaches and everyone who’s there to teach you. But then ultimately you have to do what’s required. There’s no hiding behind “Oh, the dialogue wasn’t good” or “the scene doesn’t work”. There’s clear statistics of: you’re on the brake too early; you didn’t release it early enough; you didn’t get on the power, and you lost half a second through the corner, and now you’re slow. It’s fun to do something where the metrics are so precise and clear – but also an adrenaline rush.’

Nick began working with Ferrari – starting out training with the Corso Pilota programme, then moving on to driving a F8, a range of road cars, the 812 and the 488. ‘You go through that programme with lots of other people who are enthusiastic about racing, and then you see their racing journeys continue, and you see them at the track. It becomes a nice little travelling circus and a community,’ he says as we pull up and check out his car waiting under an easy-up beside the track – gleaming red in the early sunlight, his name decal-ed on the windscreen. 

As he admires the car, it’s clear how seriously he takes this, the ambition to race competitively. ‘That would be the plan,’ he nods. ‘Once you finish the Corso Pilota programme, Club Challenge is a way to get on track, and get used to the environment of that. Technically, today, we’re not racing. We’re just lapping. We’re getting time in the car. Tomorrow morning, we’ll have a time attack. That’s when anyone who’s in the Club Challenge will go out and try to set their fastest lap time. So there’s a competition there. But this is more to get time on the different tracks that are a part of the challenge circuit… Suddenly you’ve got the radio in your ears, and the team are talking to you, and there are the pits, and you’ve got to manage the monitors – there’s just a lot of extra stuff alongside the actual racing. You have to be so focused, and try to stay calm, otherwise everything goes so quickly.’

We head to the trailer for Nick to get suited up and briefed on the track by his team, headed up by Stefan Wilson. His new race suit is based on one of Mario Andretti’s suits from 1971 (Andretti won races in Formula One, IndyCar, the World Sportscar Championship, and NASCAR). His helmet, or lid as he calls it, is designed by Mike Savage with a HANS device [head and neck restraint system]. His team talk him through the bends he’ll need to navigate, the braking distances, the points at which he’ll need to push the car through the turn.

‘I’m excited now. Yesterday, we went out for a couple of sessions, and yesterday I was scared. The speed and everything, particularly when it’s a new track I’ve never been on before. And it’s a fast track. There are a few moments where you have to really commit and trust that you’re going to make it through the turns. It’s a funny thing because the car is always more capable than me. So it’s trusting that it can do it and that you’ll make it.’

Watkins Glen hosts Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen and I Love New York 355 at The Glen, and was a Formula One course from 1961 to 1980. As Nick walks out to the car, he remembers his first of these Challenge weekends. ‘The first time I was at Sonoma Raceway in California, and my name went up on the big Jumbotron… It’s weird, because I don’t particularly get excited about seeing my name on movie billboards. But it’s a different level of excitement for me, seeing that.’

As we watch other racers, we hear that one participant has crashed during lap practice. The front of the car can be seen obliterated in close-up on the big screen. It’s sobering. ‘Sometimes I wonder why I am doing this when I’m going around the track, and it gets a bit scary,’ Nick laughs. ‘I think: why? And should I be doing this?’’ I ask what his missus thinks of him racing. ‘She’s a little nervous about it. She tells me to be safe.’ His young son is getting the driving bug with him though. ‘I’ve got a little racing sim setup at home to practise. My little boy was like, “Dad, when you go out, let me know. I’m going to jump in the sim.” He stuffs the back of the seat with a beanbag. He pulls the pedals right up, he’s got a plastic astronaut dress-up helmet. He puts that on. He knows how to do the gears and the pedals. He’ll do it seriously for a little while, and then he’s like, “Right, I’m going to see how hard I can send this car into a wall.”

Thankfully the driver in the crash is unhurt and Nick gets ready to go for a circuit. He reflects again on the different disciplines of acting and racing. ‘There is a point when you zone in. On set, obviously you can prep and learn about the character, and do all the research and learn your lines. And then when you’re on set, before they’re rolling, that’s when you can start to get yourself into the headspace. Today it’s interesting because we’ve been talking about how because my track time is limited, I have to really make the most of it, particularly if I want to try to set lap times that put me into a good stead to get into the races and be competitive.’

‘It’s fun and it’s exciting. But it’s also something I take seriously. I want to be good at it, and not embarrass myself. And to also drive within my capabilities. To be pushing it so that I can improve, but also not taking silly risks or making mistakes that could hurt anyone or myself.’ He consults his notes – numbers and scrawls written next to each corner – before he gets behind the wheel. ‘These are notes from two of the sessions that we did yesterday. So it’s almost like having a script, in some ways, and learning lines because, in theory, you know what you’re trying to do on a track.’ He points to the notebook. ‘I’ve got a curved nibble – turns one and eight. That’s just getting a little bit more on the inside curve as I’m turning, which opens up the angle of the corner so that you can go a bit quicker. Brake for 300 going into that corner. Coming here, there’s a group of corners called the “S”s, where you’re pretty much flat out. You’re probably going at 120mph… Each time you go out you’re trying to figure out how far you can push it. And also just the confidence of keeping your foot pinned to the floor, because everything in the human preservation part of your brain is saying, “You shouldn’t do this.”

Before he heads out, the Ferrari team arrives with a rare 1971 512M that competed at endurance races around the world; Sebring, Daytona, Le Mans, then Bonneville in 1974. Paul Newman himself raced it in salt-flat tests. ‘It’s beautiful,’ Nick nods, checking out the then-regulation spare tyre in the trunk. He sinks into the seat and admires the sightlines of the curved windscreen, relishing the Paul Newman of it all. ‘What are the main things you want me to work on in the first session?’ he asks his coach, Stefan. They huddle together to discuss the lift and braking of turn two before Nick straps in and revs the engine. And he’s off…

Later, after he’s passed in a blur several times, he returns from those ‘S’s and the treacherous ‘bus stop’ corners. He’s downbeat about his lap timing – 1.52.5. ‘I’m a bit hard on myself,’ he admits. ‘There were lots of positives to take from it, and then it was just about cleaning up other stuff, and stringing everything together in one lap. But it’s also being in the moment where my brain… It’s doing a backflip, I guess. You have to overcome it a few times to do it. So once I do it, and I feel it, and my eyes are in the right place, then I’ll go, “Oh, that’s it”. And I’ll be able to replicate that over and over again. But at the moment I haven’t done that.’ 

Despite Stefan’s assurances, Nick is gutted – the sign of a serious competitor. ‘If you’re doing something, then you care about it. If you’re making a film, you care about it. You want it to be the best. If you’re doing this, you care about it. I’m not here to mess around and have fun and waste people’s time. Last night, when we finished, and I got out, the team were so excited that I’d done some fast laps and made big gains. Again, I keep going back to that “being on set” thing, but if you do a good take, and people are excited, and the scene is good, and everyone can feel that momentum of “we’re making something special” – that’s what you want to do here.’

The ultimate ambition is to compete in Le Mans; ‘I’d love to’. Nick says ‘It’s a long way away but, keep chipping away. Obviously, growing up as a kid, watching it with my dad, I was attracted to the glamour of the world, and the glitz. And then it’s the smell, the sounds. And then it becomes about the deeper kind of progression of the detail, and also the mindset, and the skill, and everything else that comes together.’ As he sits on a guard rail, he looks over his shoulder at the track behind him. ‘There are so many things coming together, because it’s these outside elements that are beautiful and glorious and just overwhelming.’ 

The next day, I see he’s posted a shot to his Instagram of him spraying a bottle of champagne on the first place podium. He texts me while I’m looking at it; he’s lapped the track in 1:49.2 and won the ‘track attack’. He’s delighted – and he’s still got Sonoma, Indianapolis and the Finali Mondiali ahead of him in the season…