Crawford in “very slow” 2026 F1 talks with Cadillac

American hopeful Jak Crawford has been sounding out as many Formula 1 teams as possible to try and find an opportunity on the grid in 2026 – which may come with Cadillac. 

Once a longtime Red Bull junior, Crawford switched to the Aston Martin academy for 2024, which provided him with simulator time and several test outings in F1 machinery. 

Crawford had been eyeing an F1 debut with Aston Martin for 2026, but with Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll under contract and the situation very unlikely to change, the DAMS Formula 2 driver is openly looking at other options. 

Crawford revealed to Autosport that his future at Aston Martin was “up in the air” at the moment. 

“It depends a lot on what I do in Formula 2 this year,” he explained. “If I can win the championship, it would be great for my career. It could lead to many opportunities, whether [that’s] with a seat on the grid or potentially again reserve driver next year in Formula 1. 

“We’re trying to find any space on the grid, whether it’s with Cadillac or Aston Martin or some other teams.” 

The new Cadillac F1 team, via its team principal Graeme Lowdon, has been open about its wish to have an American driver in one of its cars, though this is no prerequisite. Currently third in the Formula 2 championship with DAMS, Crawford is the most obvious candidate from junior formulae. 

“There have been talks, I’ve been talking, but it’s very slow at the moment,” said Crawford, who was born in North Carolina and later moved to Texas. “From my side, I just need to do a good job in Formula 2.” 

With competition from the likes of grand prix winners Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas, Crawford admitted that convincing Cadillac to give him a shot is a tall order. 

“There’s nothing I can do to compete,” he added. “Actually, the only thing I can do is do well in F2. Other than that, I can’t really do anything else.” 

So, how has Crawford been doing in F1’s feeder series? This is his third season at this level after he took 13th in 2023 and fifth in 2024.

The latter result granted him 20 superlicence points, which means all he needs to be eligible for a 2026 F1 drive is another top-five finish, though he has been more ambitious than this. 

Graeme Lowdon, Cadillac F1 team principal

Photo by: Cadillac Communications

Crawford decided extending his partnership with the DAMS squad gave him the best chance of success. “We had a great car already last year, but we just were missing some small details at each race. So, I decided to stay with DAMS because I felt like we knew what the small details were to change,” he explained. 

“Last year already I felt like I was driving at quite a good level, but it just wasn’t very consistent. We just couldn’t get it right on a consistent basis. 

“Tyres are super tricky to warm up. We were able to look at all the data and improve it for the next race, but we could not obviously do the same race again. So now I feel like we’re having almost a redo of all the races this year, and we’re able to fix what went wrong.” 

So far, this has been mostly successful, despite the occasional struggle in qualifying. In the first eight rounds of 14, Crawford has scored nearly as many points as he did in the entirety of his 2024 campaign, though Spa-Francorchamps brought an end to a streak of 10 race finishes inside the top six (plus one contest he did not start), which included three victories. 

In Belgium, the 20-year-old qualified down in 14th and was involved in a first-lap incident in the sprint race as Richard Verschoor, apparently unaware of not one but two cars on his left, pushed both Crawford and Luke Browning into the gravel.

“I had a bent steering, everything was bent on the right side and I was also losing 50 points of downforce,” the DAMS driver lamented. 

Jak Crawford, DAMS Lucas Oil

Photo by: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Then Crawford desperately lacked pace in the wet feature race, taking the chequered flag in 17th after accumulating a 37-second deficit in 19 laps – with some five seconds lost in a trip through gravel and grass at Les Fagnes. 

“We tried copying what we did in Silverstone, that worked very well for us,” he said. “It didn’t work in that race, so we just struggled quite a lot.” 

Don’t let this mediocre weekend cloud your judgement of Crawford’s overall performance. Above, he referred to the Silverstone feature race, where he snatched the lead from third at the start and took a near lights-to-flag victory, withstanding attacks from Alex Dunne – the McLaren junior whom Crawford singles out as the driver who has impressed him the most. Dunne was dominant again at Spa-Francorchamps in wet conditions before losing the win to a penalty over a starting procedure breach.

Regardless, Crawford isn’t overly worried about the impact of his Spa setback: “It’s only one weekend. You try not to have some bad weekends, but we’re still quite close in the championship, so I think it’s not the end of the world. 

“There’s still five more weekends after this, so there’s still a lot at stake. Anything can happen, especially in this series. Of course it sucks not to have some good points this weekend, but not to worry. I have no doubt that I can be stronger.”