“F1” is a shiny, streamlined and perfectly aerodynamic version of an old fashioned star vehicle.

The star in this case is Brad Pitt, one of the most popular leading men of his generation. So it’s only natural he and director Joseph Kosinski chose to circle a track that Steve McQueen, James Garner and others rounded long ago. The echoes of “Grand Prix” and “LeMans” are intentional.

And Kosinski, who made sure Tom Cruise was never far from the frame in “Top Gun: Maverick,” knows a little something about star vehicles. The cars are cool and we get a bit of a sense of the engineering and strategies involved. But “F1” is more “Gran Turismo” than Ron Howard’s “Rush.” The idea here is swaggering, popcorny, crowd-pleasing fun.

Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, old school and old enough to avoid having his age ever mentioned by any track or TV coverage race announcer. He’s “the greatest who never was,” a driver of skill and the cunning that comes with years of experience. He’s also an iconoclast with a past. He wrecked once, decades ago, a crash glimpsed in the film’s opening and in flashbacks.

Now he lives in a van, drifts from track to track, circuit to circut, looking for a “seat,” a “ride.” His MO is laid out in the film’s blistering opening sequence at the 24 Hours of Daytona (the Rolex 24), a sports car endurance race like LeMans. Sonny drives the overnight laps that set up his Porsche team for victory lane the next day, when he hands the keys over to a teammate.

“Hey, you lose that lead, I’ll kill you!”

No amount of begging from the team captain (Shea Whigham) can convince competitive Sonny to come back for another season in this class. He’s off to find another race in another circuit, even off-road rallies like Dakar or the Baha 1000. And that old pal and rival (Javier Bardem) who shows up with an offer to return to the circuit that almost killed him, Formula 1, has just as hard a sell.

The Mercedes team’s about to go broke, unable to challenge Ferrari, McClaren et al. Their young, telegenic star of the driver (Damon Idris) may be popular on social media. It’s a pity he’s finishing last, when he’s finishing at all. Help us, Obi-Sonny. You’re our only hope.

The Erhen Kruger script sets up our expectations for a formulaic “mentor/protege” rivalry, with a love interest on the team (Kerry Condon plays the car-designer) and steady rise through the ranks F1 season of races. What’s fun about it is the ways it upends that formula, and how Pitt leans into the lighter side of his star appeal.

Sonny’s test drive/”audition” for a “seat” on his Apex Grand Prix team goes badly. He still gets the job. His mentoring consists of battling the kid so hard that they wreck. He can’t get the attention of the car builder with suggestions based on that cocky, 50something grin. But he does get her Irish up.

“I start listenin’ t’you when you FINISH a race!”

Pitt gives Sonny a flippancy about all of this that flies in the face of earlier treatments of this still-deadly sport. The character wears his “the greatest who never was” status, his years in the wilderness, driving taxis and gambling for a living, with an almost embarassed shrug.

Press conferences? He’s the king of smirking one-word answers to questions. And his solution to the team’s get-out-of-last-place problems are what we’d call “cheating.” “F1” has a whiff of “Talledega Nights” about it in that regard.

In Kosinski’s two and a half hour film, rival drivers (Lewis Hamilton got a producer credit) are barely glimpsed and occasionally mentioned. The focus is on the kid who has to learn patience and team building and the tricks of the track, and of the old dog teaching those new tricks.

We see shirtless Sonny’s scars from injuries, the tattoos, and the competitiveness. Sonny may affect a laid-back, devil-may-care vibe. He’s cavalier about the ways he games the rules and “Ooops” and “My bads” others off the track. But he hates losing.

The flippant banter gives this movie a jokey “Ford v. Ferrari” tone. Kosinski boils the travel and tracks down to a few tropes that capture the spectacle of Britain’s Silverstone, Mexico City’s Autódromo, the Vegas Strip course and Yas Marina in Abu Dhabi.

If you want a sense of the grandeur, tradition and deadly history of Formula 1, “Grand Prix” and “Rush” do it better.

But if you want a fun night out with a sixtysomething movie star behind the wheel, in his element and cheerfully, comically comfortable in his own long-worshipped skin, you’d be hard pressed to do better than “F1.” It takes the checkered flag among the popcorn pix of this summer.

Rating: PG-13, profanity, violent accidents, sexual situations

Cast: Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Damson Idris, Sarah Niles, Samson Kayo, Tobias Menzies, Abdul Salis, Callie Cooke, Shea Whigham and Kerry Condon.

Credits: Directed by Joseph Kosinski, scripted by Ehren Kruger. A Warner Bros./Apple release.

Running time: 2:35