Related Articles
There will be no American driver racing at this year’s United States Grand Prix.
In last year’s edition of the race, the rookie Logan Sargeant of Williams became the first American to score points in Formula 1 since Michael Andretti in 1993, finishing 10th at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas.
But Sargeant, the only American with a seat in Formula 1, was dropped by the team in August.
“He’s reached the limit of what he’s able to achieve — and in fact it’s almost unfair on him to furthermore continue with him,” James Vowles, the Williams team principal, said after Sargeant’s exit.
His replacement, Franco Colapinto of Argentina, finished eighth in Azerbaijan, surpassing in his second start what Sargeant had achieved in 18 months.
Yet the absence of an American driver is not an aberration.
In the 30 years between Andretti’s and Sargeant’s points, the only Americans have been Scott Speed from 2006-7 and Alexander Rossi for five races in 2015.
The F.I.A., the sport’s governing body, has a defined single-seater pyramid, with karting and regional entry-level Formula 4 and Formula Regional championships, but the strongest of these are in Europe, which is also the hub of Formula 1’s support categories, Formula 2 and Formula 3.
Sargeant, along with Rossi and Speed, navigated those categories and their precursors, but it is not just an American issue. The Australians Daniel Ricciardo and Oscar Piastri, and Sergio Pérez of Mexico, are the only non-European Grand Prix winners since 2012, and all three had to move to Europe in their teens.
“First of all to make Formula 1, maybe just 1 percent, and normally you need to pass all the European routes,” said Rene Rosin, team principal of the junior team Prema Racing. “You need to be very young doing the ladder: Formula 4, Formula Regional, Formula 3, Formula 2 then move up — this is the first barrier for American drivers; of course there is Formula 4 and Formula Regional in America, but the level of competition is much lower.”
Two of Rosin’s current Formula 2 drivers, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, 18, and Oliver Bearman, 19, will race in Formula 1 next year, Antonelli for Mercedes and Bearman for Haas. It means aspiring Formula 1 racers have to make sacrifices early in their careers.
Jacques Villeneuve, the most recent non-European to win the drivers’ title, in 1997, said young drivers and their families have to make sacrifices.
“Schooling, and racing, is expensive,” Villeneuve, a Canadian, said. “If you’re going to move your whole family over you’re going to have some kind of security, that’s tough, and there’s a lot of racing in America anyway.”
“I love racing in America, whether it was IndyCar or NASCAR, and it’s really a different approach, and I’ve noticed Americans have had a hard time sometimes in Europe, I don’t know why, to mix with the way F1 teams work and in the smaller categories,” he said. “It’s very strange, and not many try to come over the pond anyway, so the pool of talent” is smaller.
Villeneuve agrees that the current approach funnels youngsters through Formula 3 and Formula 2. This is because the weighting of points for the Super License, which drivers need to race in Formula 1, favors Formula 3 and Formula 2 over other categories.
Red Bull was interested in signing Colton Herta, a nine-time IndyCar race winner, to its AlphaTauri team for 2023, but was prevented from doing so because he lacked the Super License points. The F.I.A., Villeneuve said, created this pathway to force drivers into Formula 3 and 2.
Jak Crawford, 19, is the highest-placed American on the F.I.A.’s single-seater pyramid, holding fifth place in the Formula 2 championship.
“I would say it’s almost impossible to come up a different ladder system,” he said. “It’s so difficult, and it’s hard enough on the European ladder, which is so different to any other kind of ladder because of the locations, tracks, teams and stuff like that.”
“Track knowledge is also important. I’ve been racing at the same tracks since F4, so you get used to it, and the tires as well, they’re very tricky to understand. Even in Year 2 in F2 we struggle to understand them, so you need experience on those things.”
Crawford relocated to Europe when he was 13 to pursue his ambition, mirroring the path of many, including Colapinto.
“You have to be in Europe if you want to go into Formula 1,” Colapinto said. “I had that very clear in my mind since I was a little kid, and I understood the way to do it was coming into Europe. There are many more sacrifices to do than people that live close to Europe; maybe you finish a race and you go back to your family’s house, one hour by plane or maybe by car, and you’re sleeping in your bed. Whilst I’m 12,000 kilometers away.”
Crawford, part of Aston Martin Aramco’s young driver program, is aiming for a 2025 reserve role with the Formula 1 team and a seat in 2026.
He is hopeful that Formula 1’s progress in America — with three Grands Prix — will facilitate greater interest among the next generation.
“I’ve seen the growth has been massive, and ever since I started watching, when it was hard to find it on TV in the U.S., now it’s super easy. The Netflix series has helped a lot,” he said, referring to “Drive to Survive.”
“Americans want a driver in F1,” he said, “they want a driver to be winning in F1, which is obviously now my next goal.”
Villeneuve, though, is unconvinced that the Formula 1 landscape will change soon.
“They don’t need the American drivers; F1 is huge, that’s the point,” he said. “They needed it before it became big, now it became big it won’t really make a difference. Sponsors might want an American driver, but also all the companies are international, it’s global, so the sport has become global, and that I think makes it a little bit less relevant than the driver.”
<
