Amazon MGM Studios has taken worldwide rights to Throttled, a feature adaptation of Lauren Asher’s motorsport racing romance novel, with Josh Heuston of Off Campus leading the cast. Melissa Osborne will adapt the script, and Nzingha Stewart (director of Daisy Jones & the Six) will direct.
Heuston’s response to the announcement on Instagram said exactly what the entire fandom was thinking:
“Get in the car.”
We are already buckled in.
Who Is Lauren Asher?
Lauren Asher became an F1 fan after watching the Drive to Survive docuseries and got inspired to write the Dirty Air series afterwards. The books were written and published during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021. This was a time when, apparently, a lot of people were discovering Formula 1 through Netflix and desperately needed something romantic to read.
The Dirty Air series has been translated into 14 languages, and Asher has sold more than five million books worldwide. She is a New York Times, USA Today, Sunday Times, Globe and Mail, and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of contemporary romance—a list of credentials that keeps growing with every release.
Beyond the Dirty Air series, she has also written the Dreamland Billionaires series and the Lakefront Billionaires series. Her books are known for fast-paced storytelling, dual POV, and the kind of angst and steam that keeps readers up well past midnight turning pages.
What Is Throttled About?
Throttled is the first book in the four-book Dirty Air series, published in January 2020, and it is the novel that launched Lauren Asher’s career into a completely different stratosphere.
The dual POV premise is one of those setups that makes the forbidden element land so much harder, because you’re inside both Noah’s head and Maya’s simultaneously, watching them both try to resist something neither of them has any business wanting.
Noah’s voice introduces the central problem immediately:
“Maya Alatorre is the sister of my teammate… and my new obsession. Keeping my distance during the Formula 1 season should be easy, except I always find ways to see her: press tours, pre-race rituals, sponsor events and black-tie galas. The more time we spend together, the stronger my desire grows. Sneaking around with her is one thing, but wanting more? Never going to happen. She might be a distraction dressed like a daydream, but no woman is worth risking the championship title over. Or so I thought.”
And Maya’s perspective sets up why she’s so determined to stay away:
“Noah Slade is Formula 1 royalty and my brother’s biggest rival. When I’m invited to join my sibling while he competes for the World Championship, I promise to avoid Noah at all costs.”
The series gave motorsports fans a different angle of the F1 paddock and made non-motorsports fans curious to look deeper into a world they might end up liking, just like the author herself. The research Asher did before writing shows on every page — the paddock details, the sponsorship dynamics, the pressure of a championship season all feel specific and lived-in rather than decorative.
The Dirty Air Series—What Follows?
Throttled is the beginning, but the Dirty Air world continues across three more novels, each following a different couple while remaining deeply interconnected.
Collided follows Sophie Mitchell and Liam, teammates on rival sides of the paddock whose friendship pushes dangerously toward something more. Wrecked features Elena Gonzalez, assigned as a PR manager to repair the reputation of the notoriously difficult Jax Kingston. It’s enemies-to-lovers in the most pressurized possible environment.
Redeemed gives readers the story they have been waiting for since Book One: Santiago Alatorre, Maya’s older brother, finally gets his own happy ending in Italy with a fake-boyfriend arrangement that quickly becomes anything but fake.
Each book stands alone, but reading the series in order gives you the full sweep of the Dirty Air universe: characters weaving in and out of each other’s stories, and the paddock feeling more and more like a living world the deeper you go.
The Creative Team That Has Everyone Excited
The choice of Nzingha Stewart to direct is the detail that has the romance adaptation community very excited.
Stewart previously directed Daisy Jones & the Six, one of the most visually and tonally precise music-world romance adaptations in recent streaming history. Her ability to capture the specific atmosphere of a world defined by glamour, ambition, performance, and very high stakes maps directly onto what Throttled needs.
The F1 paddock is its own kind of show business, and Stewart clearly knows how to make an aspirational world feel both spectacular and emotionally intimate.
Melissa Osborne, who previously wrote My Fault: London and My Oxford Year, is adapting the screenplay. Her experience with beloved romance adaptations gives the project a writer who understands how to translate this particular kind of emotional shorthand onto the screen.
No casting for Maya has been announced yet, but when it is, it will be enormous. The chemistry between Noah and Maya is the engine of the story, and finding the right actress to play opposite Heuston will define the film.
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