The imminent arrival of a new American Formula 1 team is a source of great excitement, but it also looks at one of the major hurdles facing the most prominent aspects of any team.
With Cadillac preparing to enter 2026, the driver lineup will attract a lot of attention, with Americans likely to secure one of their seats. However, there is little hope for Colton Hertha to secure a super license, and Kyle Kirkwood also needs an IndyCar Championship victory, so he remains a long shot.
Jak Crawford links with Cadillac, but is currently part of the Aston Martin setup and is chasing this year’s Formula 2 Championship. He signed the Red Bull Junior Program and was only 14 years old when he switched to Europe in early 2020. This was done in collaboration with his father Tim and was considered a necessary step to chasing the F1 seat.
But it was the first of many steps along the difficult path to get Crawford even into what is being spoken of as a potential future F1 driver.
“I think Americans have so many really great options in America and they love living in their country,” says Tim. “If you’re a racer, I don’t think it’s dangerous to stay in America. To some extent, I feel that the deck has a little stacked up against you.
“The whole world of Formula 1 is based in the UK, not Europe, but Europe. If Heck, (arvid) Lindblad reaches Formula 1 next year, it will be six British drivers. Almost all media is based in the UK, almost all teams.
“Infrastructure is not set up for Americans to succeed. I don’t know what kind of relationships they have. So it’s really hard to start from scratch.”
Getting support from F1 teams is the obvious route to helping them move to Europe. Crawford did so on his first opportunity. However, simply not being able to get opportunities as part of a junior program does not guarantee success.
“In our case, it was a double-edged sword with Red Bull because they brought Jack to Europe,” adds Tim. “I’m not saying it’s a regret, but it’s certainly one of the first contracts that were placed before us…
“But we found our way to Europe. Perhaps with or without Helmut Marco, it certainly made it much simpler. Everything was mapped for us, and we were able to build our support system later.
“I think we’d understand it all five years later, but we probably didn’t understand it five years ago.”
After a strong early spell on the junior ladder, Crawford’s momentum stagnated slightly in seventh place in the second season of Formula 3 when he raced at Prema. It was a year when three drivers, Crawford, Oliver Bearman and Arthur LeClair, managed to win only one person and failed to take pole position between them.
Crawford raced alongside highly rated Formula One rookie Isack Hadjar when he was part of the Red Bull Junior team. Netherlands Photo Agent/Red Bull Content Pool
After that frustrating year, he still stepped up to F2 the following season, slightly beating his older teammate Isack Hadjar, who shows his class in Formula 1 for the Racing Bulls in 2023, but felt he had actually left the program after opening another development pass for him.
“After F3 years, it was a kind of reality check,” Jak says. “I knew I was under pressure, I knew I had to work a little hard. And then my first year at F2, I think it was actually a pretty good season from myself.
“The car wasn’t good, and when I think I’ll stay, I get dropped.
“When I was told to the news, I wasn’t surprised, for example, it was just based on my previous year. So it really didn’t affect me, so I was able to basically maintain that workflow. I already started myself that year, so I was able to bring in people that could help.”
Released from Red Bull at just 18, Crawford feels he’s starting from scratch compared to some of his peers, considering the lack of support networks around him at the time. It was an approach from Marco who could strengthen the driver, and while many impressive talents reached Formula 1, it didn’t fit at all with what Crawford felt they needed.
“We didn’t control the team he was in,” explains Tim. “Helmut didn’t like us to have a team of people around Jack. He was really old school and it felt like Jack didn’t need it. He didn’t need physics, he didn’t need a manager, he didn’t need a performance coach, he didn’t need any help at all.
“I remember Nikki emailing me about travel logistics and he got mad at me, so he got mad at me. Nikki is Jacques’ mom.
“After firsthand seeing how Ollie Bearman’s program was organized, there was not only his people but his interactions with Ferrari. That year we were teammates with Ollie. Ferrari was there at every event.
“One person from Red Bull didn’t support Jack, so at that point I knew it would be really difficult to make it with Red Bull based on that scenario.”
Prior to 2024, Crawford stayed in F2 with a seat with a dam, but began building more teams around him. His performance alongside Hajar gave him the confidence he could perform in the right environment, but that environment has the help of the aspect of sports psychology outside the race team.
At that point, the manager wasn’t in place, but alongside his father, the pair felt it was a good time for Crawford’s career reset.
“It didn’t all happen at once,” says Tim. “But we wanted to do something unconventional for our second year F2 driver, which is completely rebuilt from scratch, and since he was 17 when he first started F2, we wanted to ‘do it.’
“He was really thrown in when he was really young. When he was 17, he was racing guys over 21. So we started looking for a driver development contract.
“And we had a really good deal right in front of us.
“Even if there was no clear path to the seat at (Aston Martin), what they were offering from a driver development perspective was valuable.
“I just say that everyone is on a different path than F1. There’s something a little more conventional than others. But our path may not be what we chose, but it chose us.”
Crawford has earned Formula 1 seat time with Aston Martin. Clive Mason/Getty Images
Crawford says that he has actually been recommended to Aston Martin via Red Bull employees, so the 20-year-old has given him space to learn and improve on multiple aspects.
“I think participating in Aston Martin was a big part of it (where I could concentrate on development),” Jacques said. “There’s no hope of outcomes. It’s just learning.
“I already knew what I could do as a driver, so the result part was, I didn’t really have to work hard to do it anyway. It was about learning and developing all kinds of small places and trying to do something that could be slightly improved in all areas.
Marco was pushing Crawford to bounce back the junior formula one after the other, resulting in a craving patient approach. Crawford didn’t expect to find a F1 team who would be willing to offer the same level of testing and preparation as Mercedes’ Kimi Antoneri, but the speed at which Logan Sargent was quickly tracked by Formula 1 was considered a warning story.
Added Harry Soden, manager who has experienced a rapid rise in Sargeant. This was due to the obvious race between Williams and Red Bull that was apparently apparent to first enter Formula 1, which led to another move for Crawford’s team to bolster their setup.
“We interviewed quite a few other managers,” explains Tim. “And I remember Jack really asserting that he liked Harry, and what I really liked about Harry was that he was working with Logan and this time he really decided to have an American success story.
“He knew everything that was wrong with Logan’s experience, and since we spent a year and a half with Harry, he really made a big mark on how he helped us build a team around a team we didn’t have in the first place.”
With interest from Cadillac, Soden is now facing a positive challenge to try his next best move, as Crawford chased the F2 title and won Formula 1 sheet time with Aston Martin. The top five of this year’s rankings will secure a super license that can open all kinds of doors for the second season in a row.
Five years after his first move to Europe, he spent a significant amount of time in the highly successful Formula 1 team junior programme, so it wasn’t an easy road to this point. However, the driver’s paths are not the same.
