Why is it so hard for American drivers to reach Formula One?

PART I

At the starting line

Having amassed a small collection of high-end Ducatis in the basement of their Potomac, Md., home, it was only natural that Kaylen Frederick’s parents introduced him and his older sister to dirt bikes before he turned 5. Go-karting followed shortly after, and within a few years his father bought him his first kart and he began competing beyond the Washington metropolitan area. Success helped breed obsession, even as costs grew.

“At the final stage of karting when we were doing a lot of championships and a lot of racing, it was a six-figure number, 100-something-thousand,” he said of the annual cost, which includes engine rental, travel, equipment and fees.

Karting is the entry-level stage of motorsports. And by age 11, Frederick already had begun thinking about the next steps. He mulled a move to Europe, where the competition and expertise in karting are considered more sophisticated than in the United States. Just ahead of his 14th birthday, he jumped from karts to more muscular Formula cars.

Frederick transferred from private to public school in seventh grade to find a more accommodating arrangement after his race schedule forced him to miss 40 days of class the previous year. He stacked his academic schedule and graduated high school at 16.

After graduation, Frederick began competing in England, flying back and forth across the Atlantic before he eventually moved there at 17, making it easier for him to develop relationships within his team.

“In order to make it to F1 under the current circumstances, you have to be over here,” he said before referencing the virtual technology drivers use to prepare for races. “The cars are very different; the knowledge of how you drive the cars and even the culture around the simulator and how heavily you have to use that is a lot different in Europe.”

To finance professional ambitions, some young drivers sell a percentage of their potential F1 earnings to family friends or acquaintances in exchange for immediate funding. Frederick’s parents benefit from a family friend who is the principal investor of Pilot One Racing, which sponsors their son. Frederick describes him as “an investor who’s been a family friend of ours and is really into racing. He’s been following my journey since karting and has been helping us out a lot. He’s been great supporting us because otherwise we wouldn’t be able to do it.”

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That funding helped sustain his career as he became skilled enough that Formula One dreams evolved into discussions about making them a reality.

Where most F1 drivers are paid to race, F1 hopefuls typically pay teams to race in feeder series. A seat in F3 costs around $1.3 million per year, depending on the team. An F2 season costs twice as much. Neither cost accounts for additional expenses, including coaches, trainers and insurance policies to cover race damage.

Frederick is traversing the “global pathway,” a series of minor league racing tiers leading up to F1. Generally, drivers progress from a Formula Four or regional Formula Three series up to the Formula Three championship, in which Frederick currently competes for a French team called ART Grand Prix against 29 other drivers. If they improve and play their cards right, they may earn one of 22 seats in Formula Two. After that, only a select few will be chosen to fill any openings in Formula One.

The pathway to Formula One

The FIA established a system for drivers to get from karting to F1.

Karting

Formula Four championships certified by the FIA

French

British

Chinese

German

Italian

Japanese

South East Asia

NACAM

Brazilian

Spanish

UAE

United States

Indian

Formula regional championships

certified by the FIA

Japanese

European

Americas

Asian

Oceania

Indian

Middle East

Formula Three

Formula Two

Formula One

World Championship

The pathway to Formula One

The FIA established a system for drivers to get from karting to F1.

Karting

Formula Four championships certified by the FIA

French

British

Chinese

German

Italian

Japanese

Brazilian

NACAM

South East Asia

Spanish

UAE

United States

Indian

Formula regional championships certified by the FIA

European

Japanese

Indian

Oceania

Middle East

Americas

Asian

Formula Three

Formula Two

Formula One

World Championship

When Frederick, now a month shy of 21, began competing full time in Europe in 2019, he joined British Formula Three, a regional F3 series, and won the title during his second season. He progressed to Formula Three in 2021, in which he has earned several top-10 finishes but has yet to make the podium.

Pushing himself to become a better driver at this stage of his career was expected. The off-track maneuvering required to advance beyond this point was less anticipated.

“As you get into F3, there’s a lot of different moving parts. It’s like a game of chess,” Frederick said. “From my side, it can be frustrating because it’s hard to get to the right place at the right time, and it can be expensive, too.”

PART II

Get with the program

Tim Crawford remembers the day he surrendered the ability to guide his son’s journey.

A decade earlier, Tim had taken 4-year-old Jak Crawford to empty parking lots to practice driving a kid kart. Over time, the activity progressed from hobby to craft after Tim began entering his son in races and Jak began beating older children, displaying a precocious talent for maneuvering karts through corners.

Tim, who owns a go-karting track in a suburb north of Houston, financed his son’s racing career, and by 10 Jak had finished as the runner-up in one of the biggest international karting competitions. Tim was charting Jak’s path to become a NASCAR driver, but after the second-place finish in Italy, Ferrari’s storied Formula One team reached out to express interest in Jak, sparking the boy’s interest in an F1 career. Jak transitioned to full-time formula racing shortly after and at 13 began competing in Formula Four in Mexico in the summer of 2018.

Formula One powerhouse Red Bull stepped into the picture in 2019 when Helmut Marko, the head of its illustrious driver development program, invited Jak and Tim to Red Bull Racing’s headquarters in Milton Keynes, about 50 miles north of London.

F1 teams began creating driver development programs to attract and groom future racing talent. They typically sign those drivers to multiyear contracts, financing them in feeder series such as F2 and F3. Since its 2001 inception, the Red Bull program has produced more than a dozen Formula One drivers, including four-time champion Sebastian Vettel and reigning champ Max Verstappen.

A driver academy can relieve much of the financial burden placed on prospective F1 drivers, though they may still be on the hook for certain expenses, including their transportation across an international race schedule. Relationships are critical when climbing the ladder, and being a part of a junior program can facilitate those connections to reach the favorable end of a team’s pecking order.

Joining a junior program at an early stage also means sacrificing a degree of control. A driver has input in career decisions, but the team and the academy have the final say. They may fast-track promising drivers to a top series — at the risk of undue pressure — or they may position the drivers against softer competition — and hamper their growth.

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On a cold November day in 2019 at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Austria, Tim Crawford watched Jak test-drive Formula Four cars. Jak was scheduled for two days of evaluation, but partway through the first, Marko presented a five-year contract.

“It was like a dream come true,” Jak said. “In a way, I didn’t even think it was a possibility, so I was super honored and quite surprised.”

Four months earlier, Jak had participated in a similar evaluation for Ferrari in Italy and received no such offer. In Red Bull, he saw a door to Formula One open and encouraged his father to sign. Three months later he moved to the Netherlands, where his Formula Four team’s headquarters was located.

“Because Red Bull is a contributing partner, financially, I don’t get to make all the calls — I hardly make any of the calls — about what his program is, where he should race, who he should race for and his timeline,” Tim Crawford said. “So that day in 2019 when I signed that contract, I signed a lot of his rights away to be able for me and him to guide our own path.”

Crawford in 2020 finished second in a German Formula Four series and in 2021 moved up to F3, in which he finished 13th. Tim partly attributes the drop-off to inadequate car performance and Jak’s inexperience. His son improved to a seventh-place finish last year, better than Frederick and the other three Americans on the F3 grid. This season, Jak rose to F2, in which he competes for Hitech Pulse-Eight alongside fellow Red Bull junior Isack Hadjar. He ranks 16th through four race weekends.

Crawford is one of six Red Bull-backed drivers competing in F2 — and one of three Americans, next to Juan Manuel Correa and Brad Benavides. He ranks above the other Americans in the standings but sits last among his fellow Red Bull juniors.

Now 18, Crawford said he is focused on refining his skills. He has identified shortcomings in his driving that he believes can be addressed through experience. He said he has thought about his place in the Red Bull pipeline but believes race day results are only part of the equation.

“It’s really hard to judge,” Crawford said of Red Bull’s potential pecking order. “Of course you can do it by results … but it also depends on what you can do for Red Bull as a person. For me, I think being an American gives me an advantage in terms of publicity and everything. America’s growing really big for F1 right now, so I think I have a greater advantage than most. But it’s really hard to tell who Red Bull likes more than the others.”

PART III

Reaching the Summit

A year after Red Bull launched its junior program, the team in 2002 organized the Red Bull Driver Search to identify American drivers to add to its academy. Michael Andretti in 1993 had been the last American to race on the F1 grid, and Red Bull wanted to find the next.

Following a contentious selection process, four finalists were chosen, but after four years, just one, Scott Speed, made it onto the grid when he raced for Toro Rosso (now called AlphaTauri) in 2006 and 2007.

One hundred fifty-four Americans preceded Speed on the grid — a number inflated by the Indianapolis 500’s inclusion in the F1 season from 1950 to 1960. Of that group, Phil Hill is the only American-born F1 champion, having won the 1961 drivers’ title with Ferrari. Italy-born Mario Andretti won the 1978 crown with now-defunct Lotus. Andretti’s son, Michael, racing for McLaren, was the last before Speed. After two seasons, Vettel replaced Speed at Toro Rosso, and eight years passed before another American, Alexander Rossi in 2015, raced in F1.

American drivers in Formula One

Since the start of F1 in 1950, 157 American drivers have competed in at least one race.

The Indianapolis 500 was included in the F1 schedule from 1950 to 1960.

50

40

30

20

10

0

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

2020

Since 1990, there have been just four American drivers

1990

Michael Andretti

13 races

2000

Scott Speed

18

10

2010

Alexander Rossi

5

2020

Logan Sargeant

4

Sources: formula1.com and ergast.com

American drivers in Formula One

Since the start of F1 in 1950, 157 American drivers have competed in at least one race.

The Indianapolis 500 was included in the F1 schedule from 1950 to 1960.

50

40

30

20

10

0

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

2020

Since 1990, there have been just four American drivers

18

13 races

10

5

4

Logan

Sargeant

Michael

Andretti

Scott

Speed

Alexander

Rossi

1990

2000

2010

2020

Sources: formula1.com and ergast.com

IndyCar driver Colton Herta was expected to end the most recent American drought ahead of this season, but he stumbled at the final hurdle: the super license points system. Drivers must earn a “super license” from the FIA, Formula One’s governing body; that license is earned by accumulating points along the path to F1 — among other requirements. Drivers must earn at least 40 points, and those points are awarded based on how drivers perform in lower-tier series, with point allocation favoring FIA-sanctioned competitions over outside series such as IndyCar. The system, introduced in the 1990s, disincentivizes F1 hopefuls from competing outside of Europe.

“The reason why I think there have been such long gaps of having U.S. drivers on the grid is because of the way that F1 works in terms of having its own ladder system,” said Rossi, who along with Speed climbed that developmental ladder. “It’s got its own feeder series, and you have to go through those steps.”

Herta, 23, took a less conventional route to try to break into F1. He graduated from karting to European F4 and F3 circuits, but his path diverged in 2017, when he returned to the United States, citing his desire to compete in IndyCar.

Herta raced in a second-tier IndyCar series then-called IndyLights for a team co-owned by Michael Andretti and in 2019 moved up to IndyCar, in which he finished as high as third in the 2020 season. As Herta competed in the United States, Andretti led a bid to buy a controlling stake in Sauber, which operates F1’s Alfa Romeo team. He planned to rebrand the team and insert Herta as one of its drivers, but the deal fell through in 2021.

[Colton Herta was poised to become F1′s only U.S. driver. What happened?]

Red Bull in 2022 explored signing Herta as an AlphaTauri driver for the 2023 season (the energy drink company owns Red Bull Racing and AlphaTauri), but the California native finished 10th in the IndyCar standings, leaving him eight points shy of the required 40 to get a super license. Red Bull sought an exemption from the FIA, but its request was denied and the team abandoned efforts to bring Herta to F1 in September.

“It’s very difficult,” Rossi said of the path to F1. “It’s not that Americans don’t have the skills or the ability. It takes a lot for a driver and a family to make that sacrifice to go over to Europe and kind of start a new life. In the past 20 years, it’s been Scott, myself and now Logan, right? So there’s been a lot of failures in that time period.”

LEFT: After missing out on a chance to race in Formula One, Colton Herta signed a four-year contract extension with Andretti Autosport that ties him to the IndyCar team through 2027. (Michael Conroy/AP) RIGHT: Logan Sargeant is 19th out of 20 drivers in the standings. (Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

Shortly after the Herta disappointment, Sargeant, a Florida native who came up through the European system, emerged as the next likely American on the grid.

In October, former Williams team principal Jost Capito said the team would promote Sargeant from its academy ahead of the 2023 season if he obtained the necessary super license points. That required Sargeant to earn a strong finish in the final race of the 2022 F2 season, and he did, clinching the necessary points with a fourth-place finish in the final standings.

“Being the first American in a while is honestly such a privilege” Sargeant said in February. “A great opportunity to represent my country to the best of my ability.”

Before the super license drama, financial issues nearly derailed Sargeant’s journey to F1. Sargeant moved to Europe at 12 to pursue an F1 career. Seven years later, he finished third in the 2020 F3 season, but five months after its conclusion, he couldn’t find backing for the upcoming F2 campaign. His F1 dreams were “dead in the water,” and he considered returning to the United States to race in IndyLights.

“F2 is definitely ruled out for 2021,” he told motorsports site Racer at the time. “The problem with F2 is the funding for it is very high, as we know. … If anything I think it has actually gone up a little bit, so that’s made it really difficult.”

Later that year, he secured a seat with F3’s Charouz, and in October 2021 Williams signed him to its academy roster, resuscitating his dreams. Sargeant advanced to F2 in 2022, and Williams positioned him to secure the F1 seat by season’s end.

Now in Formula One, Sargeant will make an estimated $1 million to compete for Williams this year, according to Spotrac. Racing for a team that finished last in 2022, Sargeant has finished as high as 12th this season as he continues to grow in his new role.

Reaching F1 offers no guarantees of success, though.

A team and the competitiveness of the cars it produces can propel a driver into the title hunt or doom them to a career in the middle of the pack. But for some American drivers, reaching and competing at the top is a huge part of the journey. For some drivers, that is the goal.

“Getting to race in F1, it’s the pinnacle,” Rossi said. “It’s the best of the best for a lot of different reasons. So getting to do that was the goal. And in some respects, I kind of accomplished the dream I had at 10 years old.”