Can America's top talents still reach F1?

Max had a key win in early November. He started from pole position on a classic track, led from start to finish and won by just under three tenths of a second. Later that night, he learned that Verstappen had just won a crucial race in Mexico.

Max Esterson became the fourth American racer to win the prestigious Walter Hayes Trophy at Silverstone that day. The 21st running of an intense junior single-seater contest came one week after the similarly competitive Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch, where Esterson snatched the runners-up spot having started 13th. It was a significant achievement at the 50th Festival, where former F1 drivers Roberto Moreno and Jan Magnussen were also competing.

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On the evening before the event, I asked both Roberto and Jan about the value of winning at that level. Moreno ended up in tears, telling guests at the BRSCC celebratory dinner about the testing contract earned with Lotus as a result of winning the Festival; it gave him a lifeline to build his career in Europe. Magnussen was also grateful for the plaudits of winning the event in 1992 after his year in the national championship hadn’t resulted in a title.

Winning significant junior events can be fundamental to a career; it worked for Mark Webber and for Jenson Button, the only Festival winner to become Formula 1 world champion. Conor Daly, son of ex-F1 driver Derek, won the Walter Hayes in 2008 and is a regular IndyCar racer, while Josef Newgarden won the Kent Festival in 2008 and is now a double IndyCar champion.

But seeing an American win at a key European junior level and then make it all the way to F1 is uncommon. Alexander Rossi came in at a slightly higher level in Europe before racing in GP3 and GP2 and starting five races for Marussia in 2015. Now he’s another of the competitive oval, road and street track racers in his home country.

Rossi's brief spell in F1 with the backmarker Marussia team in 2015 marked the last time an American raced at the top level

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Scott Speed was the last US driver to complete full campaigns in F1 thanks to being picked up by the Red Bull driver search programme which was specifically looking to promote drivers from America. The backing allowed him to compete in British Formula 3, European Formula Renault and GP2, a sequence that gave him a high level of preparation for his grand prix debut in 2006.

That particular Red Bull programme had ended by then, but perhaps we are about to see a resurgence across the teams to look into US talent now the popularity of F1 is building across the country.

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Max Esterson may be one of those being monitored, a driver whose opportunities have been boosted thanks to the Team USA Scholarship programme. Created by Jeremy Shaw, a British motorsport journalist and commentator who has been based in the United States for over 35 years, the scheme supported Conor Daly and Newgarden as well as Jimmy Vasser and Bryan Herta. Shaw has his own views on driver development.

"If a young driver is partnered with an F1 team on one of their junior programmes then great, they’re going to get a lot more resource. But if they’re not they are pretty much wasting their time and money" Jeremy Shaw

“Without going through the ranks in Europe, it’s really difficult to step into a Formula 1 car,” he told me a few days after Michael Andretti’s plans to get IndyCar race winner Colton Herta into an Alfa Romeo were curtailed. “It would have been awfully difficult for Colton to be competitive; he did the junior categories in Europe but didn’t have the funding to carry onto the higher levels (F3 and F2) and that’s where you learn so much more.”

So what about someone like Max Esterson getting a chance to do the full European build-up sequence?

“If a young driver is partnered with an F1 team on one of their junior programmes then great, they’re going to get a lot more resource,” he says. “But if they’re not they are pretty much wasting their time and money. Now that a lot more people in the United States know about Formula 1, perhaps F1 teams will start paying attention to the young US drivers a bit more.”

Logan Sargeant logged his first F1 mileage for Williams in this week's Abu Dhabi rookie test

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

McLaren is a team that may look in that direction. It is partially funded by American investors as well as integrating with an IndyCar team that ran Mexican racer Pato O’Ward, who tested for McLaren’s F1 team after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, and afterwards pledged to do “everything I can” to make a switch happen. Executive director Zak Brown would surely like to see a racer from North America rise to the very top.

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But Shaw reckons F1 teams might already have missed out on a talent who could have been the perfect fit, a driver who finished second at the Walter Hayes Trophy in 2016 and won US FF2000 and Indy Lights titles over the following three years.

“Oliver Askew is someone they’ve missed because Oliver is a massive, massive talent and he doesn’t have a lot of racing experience,” Shaw says of the newly-signed Andretti Formula E driver. “Even when he got to IndyCar he only had three years of racing, one year at each level. If he was given the training and the mileage that you need, he could do it in my opinion.”

Drive to Survive on Netflix and the Miami Grand Prix are both elements that are ramping up the fever in the United States, but imagine the buzz that would be created by the 23rd grand prix win for an American. Formula 1 could soar even higher, much to the delight of US owners Liberty, so perhaps Max Esterson’s Walter Hayes victory could not have come at a better time.

Esterson showed his talent by winning the Walter Hayes Trophy at Silverstone

Photo by: Steve Jones