Max Esterson is chasing the American dream in Formula 3

Just five years ago, Max Esterson was a teenager from New York City realizing his racing dreams on the kart track for the first time, after years of honing his craft through iRacing.

Today, you may not recognize Esterson. He’s moved to the United Kingdom, for one thing, and he’s also currently racing for Jenzer Motorsport in the FIA Formula 3 Championship. That’s a big leap for someone just 21 years old — but you could perhaps call it the American dream.

Max Esterson: Chasing racing dreams from New York City to the United Kingdom

New York City native Max Esterson grew up a fan of motorsport. His father, Robin Esterson, is a former race car engineer who celebrated Emerson Fittipaldi’s 1989 Indianapolis 500 win as part of the team, and the young family was a regular at American race tracks.

But for a young Max Esterson, racing was something to do online — not in real life.

“It all started on the sim for me when I was nine or 10,” Esterson recalled in an exclusive interview with PlanetF1.com.

Esterson’s brother received a wheel and pedal set for Christmas, but the gift was perhaps better suited to Max, who instantly fell in love with the idea of sim racing. By the time he hit his teenage years, he was competing in iRacing’s professional series and making a name for himself.

But in 2019, when Esterson was 16 years old, it was time to see how those sim skills translated to the race track, and he contested his first partial season of karting with McAleer Racing at Oakland Valley Race Park. It was love at first rev.

“At the end of 2019, I tested a Formula Ford in the US for the first time and kind of instantly felt that it was much easier than karting for me,” Esterson said. Commencing half way through the year in July of 2020 because of the pandemic, he took part in a few F1600 Championship races in the United States, as well as one race in the F2000 Championship — a race that he won.

But while COVID-19 had stymied his best-laid plans for 2020, and at the end of the year, Esterson made the call to head to England and try his hand at the Formula Ford Festival and the Walter Haynes trophy. At the former, he qualified second in his heat and came home in an impressive sixth in the Grand Final.

While it isn’t exactly easy for any young driver to commit to pursuing a full-time motorsport career, there are particular obstacles in place for Americans hoping to enter the hyper-competitive European ladder system — the first being distance.

For the 2021 season, Esterson made a move to Brackley in England, near the Mercedes Formula 1 team’s headquarters. At just 18 years old, he was striking it out completely on his own in a foreign country, still pursuing his high school diploma via online participation (made possible courtesy of COVID) at his high school in NYC and dedicating himself to as much racing as he could.

But when Esterson is asked about what inspired the move, his answer is simple: Racing in America, “the cost didn’t make sense.

“In England, you can race more at a pretty low cost, I guess because the country’s small physically, so you can get to a lot of tracks easily.

“Plus, the testing infrastructure is set up so well there compared to the US. There were some weeks where I think I tested on three different tracks.”

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Going from bustling New York City to the sleepy town of Brackley offered a bit of a culture shock to Esterson — but the slower pace of life was conducive to his ever-growing driver development program.

“I think I did 78 days in the car that year,” Esterson said of his first full year in England. “There wasn’t too much time sitting around.”

All that time behind the wheel accelerated Esterson’s career path. In 2021, he competed in the National Formula Ford Championship, leading it for much of the year and ultimately taking third overall. He won the Walter Hayes Trophy and finished second at the Formula Ford Festival. The following year, he led every lap of his final in the Formula Ford Festival, then took victory. He was on pace to secure his second Walter Hayes trophy, led each and every lap and crossed the line the winner before a controversial penalty dropped him from first to fifth.

In 2022 and 2023, he contested the GB3 Championship, taking a victory in his first season. At the end of his 2022 campaign, Esterson took part in a postseason FIA Formula 3 test, then joined the series for four races.

But in 2024 came the big break: Esterson signed on with Jenzer Motorsport for a full season in FIA F3.

A look at the box score doesn’t tell the whole story: Esterson took an impressive sixth-place finish in his F3 debut in Bahrain, followed by a seventh in the feature race at Spa. But to compare Jenzer with a current Formula 1 team, it’s more of a Williams than a Red Bull Racing. Every points-scoring finish is well earned at Jenzer, and it isn’t a guarantee.

When asked what he wishes more people knew about him, Max Esterson thought for a while before he answered, “Just that I’m still quite new to all this, in terms of real racing.

“I wasn’t in the go-kart until 16 (and even then it was for five club weekends), whereas others started racing maybe 10 years before me.”

And he also had an uphill battle to fight as an American. While Esterson declined to offer too many comparisons between the international and US scenes — after all, he didn’t do much racing in the US — he did share some critical observations.

“The level of junior racing in Europe and especially England is super high because it’s so concentrated,” he said.

He pointed to his Formula Ford team, which was based in Brackley, as an example.

“There’s so much knowledge in that area around Silverstone, so many good people involved in motorsport there,” he said.

“Even the jump from GB3 to FIA F3 was tricky, because it’s more separate than you would think. It’s getting better now that GB3 has become more popular in the last few years, but I would say that drivers who have done Italian F4 and FRECA are more on the radar for teams in F3 and F2.”

That means that, as the 2024 Formula 3 season winds to a close, many of his competitors already have future plans squared away. Perhaps they’ll contest another year in F3, or move up to Formula 2. Perhaps they’ve signed with a Formula 1 team’s junior program.

But right now, Esterson isn’t one of those drivers. With just two events remaining — a sprint and a feature at Monza — the American racer is hoping that a strong send-off to the 2023 F3 season will give him the edge he needs to become someone’s first choice for the 2025 season.

He’s hoping for a second year in Formula 3, a chance to really prove himself in a series that is massively competitive and massively challenging.

“Especially when you don’t know all the circuits,” Esterson added. At nearly every track this season, he was physically racing on that surface for the first time — and no amount of simulator practice or data revision can truly prepare you for the realities of competition somewhere like Spa-Francorchamps or Monaco.

“Being a rookie in F3 is super difficult,” he said. “Track time is so limited — I think having a second year would be a huge advantage or at least put me on more even footing with the others.”

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