Jak Crawford is currently the U.S.’ sole driver in the largest motorsport competition on this planet, though you’d be forgiven for considering otherwise.
The Texas native has acquired that classic Formula One twang. It’s the product of years spent racing across the globe, including vast amounts of time in Europe — a blended, nonspecific accent not dissimilar to the cadence of other talented teenagers who grew up on international race tracks, like Britain’s Lando Norris and Ollie Bearman.
Having risen the ranks from F4 all of the approach to F2 — a championship he narrowly lost last yr to Italy’s Leonardo Fornaroli — Crawford, just 21, entered this season with an almost unprecedented amount of experience under his (seat)belt.
After that no-doubt gutwrenching F2 loss, Aston Martin was readily available to melt the blow. They made Crawford their reserve driver for the jewel within the FIA crown (and the one contest these kids put their lives on the road for): F1. His job? To attain Lawrence Stroll’s prized racing team crucial points within the event of Fernando Alonso or Lance Stroll being unable to drive.
“It’s a fairly rare thing, I feel,” Crawford tells The Hollywood Reporter about being an American F1 driver. He’s speaking from Aston Martin’s lavish team yacht, docked in Monaco. We’re a guest of the team here within the municipality for essentially the most glamorous race on the F1 calendar, the one sporting event on the planet where A-listers (corresponding to, this yr, Cynthia Erivo, Patrick Dempsey, Noah Schnapp, Terry Crews, Olivia Wilde, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas) come second to the spectacle. The conversation is frequently — and politely — interrupted by uniformed staff offering us a choice of extravagant canapés, because the Côte d’Azur sun beats down on a busy harbour teeming with billionaire boats.
“Me and Logan Sargeant are really the one ones who’ve been close since Scott Speed was on the grid,” continues Crawford, referencing the previous Scuderia Toro Rosso driver, whose last F1 appearance was in 2007. “So yeah, it’s been some time. But I’m super proud to represent my country — not only in Formula One but in Formula Two over the past couple of years. Being an American, there’s actually so many young U.S. kids that drive go-karts and I feel almost look as much as me, in a way. I feel like I didn’t have that enough. There was nobody from my country to support anyone in F1.”
The rarity of Crawford’s position is just more impressive whenever you consider how American the game has develop into over the past decade. In 2017, the Formula One Group was bought by the Colorado-based Liberty Media for an eye-watering $4.4 billion.
Crawford at F1’s pre-season testing in Abu Dhabi, December 9, 2025.
Courtesy of Getty
Fast forward nine years, and there at the moment are three U.S. races on the calendar, in Las Vegas, Miami and Austin — greater than some other country — and, in accordance with F1, the game now boasts 52 million fans across America, up 11 percent year-on-year. “I even have so many friends, especially my age, [who] had no idea what I did or what I desired to do growing up,” Crawford says. “And now they know all about it and are available to my races.”
He concedes that much of that is right down to the Netflix doc Drive to Survive — the success of which tons of of Hollywood producers have tried, and failed, to recreate — though even Crawford is stunned by the glitzy names which have joined us here in Monte Carlo. “I saw Kim Kardashian,” he tells THR. (The truth behemoth and Skims founder is within the paddock supporting Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton.) “I’ve seen rather a lot of security guards. I’ve just been pushed out of the best way!” he laughs. “It’s been super strict all weekend.”
Kardashian shouldn’t be a lady who needs explaining to anyone. But Crawford, admittedly, has never heard of The Hollywood Reporter. Perhaps our being here’s a testament to F1’s rising celebrity-ness, or perhaps, more simply, a race automobile driver like Crawford can’t get enthusiastic about film and TV news. The latter is more likely, given his interest in padel (a combination of tennis and squash) and running, in addition to a preference for the more lowkey F1 events: “I like Monaco more for the track and the racing, but yeah, I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily my vibe,” he says. “I like quieter races, however it’s still super cool, in fact.”
It is smart — Crawford has already notched up over 2,000 kilometres (1,242 miles) in F1 machinery, but he’s eager to get as much time within the automobile as possible. “I’m able to drive at any point,” he says about potentially stepping in for Alonso or Stroll. “I feel ready, and naturally, I don’t wish anything bad on anyone, but when the chance [were] to arise, I’d definitely take the chance to attempt to show my best.”
The step-up from F2 to F1 is, as Crawford describes it, the largest any driver will do of their profession. “The cars, in fact, are faster — you have got more downforce, more power. But I feel the largest thing is more the technology,” he says. “And the quantity of individuals you’re employed with. Now we have so many individuals, probably near 1,000 people, that work for the team. In Formula Two, we had 12,” he smiles. “So it’s an enormous difference.” It’s a discrepancy that has even necessitated Crawford change up his gym routine to compensate for the immense muscle needed within the neck and body to handle the force of driving an F1 automobile.
It’s also been something of an emotional whirlwind to abruptly be sharing the paddock along with his childhood heroes. “Growing up, I at all times looked as much as Max [Verstappen],” continues Crawford, “He was a young guy, really fast, and a variety of the time I relate to that because I used to be quite young once I began. Now he’s among the best drivers on this planet.”
Luckily, as competitive as these 22 drivers are, they’re “pretty nice” and “at all times say hello” to the young American. And racing under the U.S. flag, Jak Crawford is hoping that sometime — within the near future — certainly one of them will likely be his teammate.