It wasn't easy for Christian Bale to prepare for director James Mangold's Ford v Ferrari,
but it was worth the effort.
Looper recently spoke with Ford v Ferrari stunt coordinator Robert Nagle about how he
made the veteran actor road-ready.
Here's the truth behind Bale's intense training for the pic.
To teach Bale how to drive like a real racer, Nagle sent the former Dark Knight to the Bondurant
High Performance Driving School in Arizona.
For seven days, Bale spent seven hours on the track, learning how to drive thanks to
lessons from Nagle's hand-picked instructor.
But that was only part of Bale's education, and there was a reason why Boundurant was
the place Bale did his first phase of Ford v Ferrari prep.
Nagle explained:
"Part of the reason I picked Bondurant [was that] Bob Bondurant was an icon from that
era and was a big part of that GT40 program."
Two years before Ken Miles' history-making performance at the 1966 automobile event,
racecar driver Bob Bondurant completed 334 laps at the 1964 24 Hours of Le Mons.
Like Miles, Bondurant was driving a car designed by Carroll Shelby, the engineer whom Matt
Damon plays in Ford v Ferrari.
"Just shut your mouth and let me do my thing.
Alright."
It was enough to win the GT class at the event, but not the overall race.
Naturally, a Ferrari came in first.
For a full week, Bondurant regaled Bale and Nagle with stories from the Ford v Ferrari
era of the mid-1960s.
Nagle estimated that Bale and Bondurant chatted for four or five hours a day.
To Nagle's surprise, Bondurant was also close friends with Miles, and had plenty of insights
to share about the late star.
Nagle dished:
"The information that [Bale was] able to get from Bob was amazing.
It was an almost surreal experience to be able to sit down with this guy and listen
to his stories.
It was phenomenal."
The instructors at the Bondurant High Performance Driving School are top class, but at the end
of Bale's training behind the wheel, Nagle had to hop in a car to see the actor's progress for himself.
It was during this final exam of sorts that Bale was really put to the test, as Nagle
joined Bale on the track and intentionally placed pressure on him to see how well he
could hold his composure and focus on the road.
"If you're gonna push a piece of machinery to the limit and expect it to hold together,
you have to have some sense of where that limit is."
Nagle shared:
"The last day of the training, we finished in real race cars.
One of the tests that I do is to whomever I'm training is to see how well they stay
focused, to see if I can distract them.
[If] they start paying more attention to my car then they are their own car, then mistakes
start to happen."
Nagle didn't go easy on Bale just because he's a big-name actor, either.
He admitted, quote, "I hounded him pretty hard.
I was inches off his gearbox and trying to fill his mirrors left and right, doing everything
I could to distract him."
According to Nagle, Bale managed to keep his cool and complete the task without any punch,
he passed the test with flying colors and, quote, "never bobbled once."
Nagle praised Bale's professionalism during training.
He admitted:
"He's hands down the best actor I've ever trained."
Coming from a pro like Nagle, that's quite a compliment!
All of that training paid off big when it came time to shoot Ford v Ferrari.
Thanks to his extensive training, Bale knew exactly what his car was supposed to be doing
during Ford v Ferrari's race scenes, allowing him to react accordingly while "driving."
Additionally, his work at the Bondurant High Performance Driving School actually led to
some real time behind the wheel on screen.
As Nagle shared with Looper:
"Because of the training we did with him, I felt very comfortable putting Christian
in the car."
So, he did.
Nagle revealed that the times in Ford v Ferrari when you see Miles, quote, "come screaming
into the pits and jump out of the car, or jump into the car [and] merge into traffic
that's going 100, 150 miles an hour" aren't fake, and they're not the work of a stuntman, either.
Nagel confessed:
"That's Christian.
You can't fake that."
Some of the cars used in the movie were remarkably close to the real things, too, creating an
even greater sense of authenticity.
Nagle explained:
"There's a company called Superformance, and they're actually licensed to make what they
call continuation copies of the GT40.
We had a few of those."
Yes, that means the cars you see in the movie have the same engine, a Ford 427, as the one
that Miles actually drove.
And yes, it was just as impressive, and fun, to handle.
In Nagel's words, it was, quote, "Quite a beast to drive."
We can only imagine.
"That's more like it!"
Ford v Ferrari is in theaters now.
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