Jak Crawford is currently the U.S.’ sole driver in the biggest motorsport competition in the world, though you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
The Texas native has acquired that classic Formula One twang. It’s the product of years spent racing around 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 the way to F2 — a championship he narrowly lost last year 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 on hand to soften the blow. They made Crawford their reserve driver for the jewel in the FIA crown (and the one contest these kids put their lives on the line for): F1. His job? To score Lawrence Stroll’s prized racing team crucial points in the event of Fernando Alonso or Lance Stroll being unable to drive.
“It’s a pretty rare thing, I think,” 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 in the municipality for the most glamorous race on the F1 calendar, the only sporting event on the planet where A-listers (such as, this year, Cynthia Erivo, Patrick Dempsey, Noah Schnapp, Terry Crews, Olivia Wilde, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas) come second to the spectacle. The conversation is regularly — and politely — interrupted by uniformed staff offering us a selection of extravagant canapés, as the Côte d’Azur sun beats down on a busy harbour teeming with billionaire boats.
