Logan Sargeant, the one American driver in Components 1, is zipping across the slim streets of Baku, Azerbaijan, at roughly 200 miles an hour. His head bounces contained in the cockpit as a wheel shudders over a rumble strip. It’s laborious to listen to over the banshee shriek of his V6 engine, carrying 3 times the horsepower of a run-of-the-mill Porsche Carrera.

Then the noise stops, and Baku vanishes. We’re inside a low-slung brick constructing nestled within the Oxfordshire countryside. The monitor, projected onto a CinemaScope-sized wraparound display screen, was a mirage, a part of a complicated coaching simulator. (F1 guidelines prohibit driving the actual automobiles between races.) Mr. Sargeant climbs out of a duplicate driver’s seat carrying athletic pants. He gained’t want a fireproof go well with till later.

In three weeks’ time, Mr. Sargeant will do that for actual: wind whipping his visor, G-forces of as much as six occasions his physique weight urgent on his neck, the ever-present menace of a catastrophic crash as he’s watched by roughly 70 million individuals around the globe. For now, it’s time for lunch. “Is chili unhealthy for you?” he asks, digging right into a bowl at his crew’s commissary. “I don’t suppose it’s that unhealthy.”

Reaching Components 1, the best degree of worldwide motor sport, is a giant step for Mr. Sargeant, 22, a South Florida native who started racing rudimentary automobiles often called karts at 6 years outdated and this yr joined the Williams Racing crew as the primary full-time American F1 driver since 2007.

For Components 1 itself, discovering a hometown hero for American followers is a huge leap.

Though it’s enormously widespread in Europe, F1 struggled for many years to interrupt into the US. That started to vary in 2016, when the game was bought for $4.4 billion by the Colorado-based Liberty Media, owned by the cable magnate John Malone. Liberty ramped up its social media — F1 had barely saved a YouTube web page — and backed a well-liked Netflix documentary collection, “Drive to Survive.” As soon as geared towards ageing white males, F1 now has a youthful and extra numerous fan base. American TV viewership is up 220 p.c from 2018, and the game made $2.6 billion in income final yr.

Nonetheless, a subset of F1 devotees complain about what they see as an overemphasis on leisure and ginned-up drama. Beneath Liberty, they argue, pure racing is taking a again seat to low-cost methods to reel in informal viewers. And so they usually use a grimy phrase for it: Americanization. “It’s turning into an increasing number of like Components Hollywood,” Bernie Ecclestone, the 92-year-old Briton who constructed F1 into a world enterprise, griped final yr. “F1 is being made an increasing number of for the American market.”

The backlash reached a crescendo eventually week’s Miami Grand Prix, which was added in 2022 as a showpiece for American followers. In a prizefight-style pre-race ceremony, the rapper LL Cool J launched the 20 drivers one after the other amid swirling smoke and a squad of cheerleaders. Close by, Will.i.am carried out a reside orchestra taking part in the rap tune he not too long ago recorded with Lil Wayne as a part of a “world music collaboration” with Components 1. (The lyrics rhyme “Max Verstappen,” the title of the game’s high driver, with “your champion.”)

“Pandering to the American viewers is killing @F1,” wrote one fan on Twitter, echoing criticism that bubbled up throughout quite a few F1 web sites. Even the racers complained: “Not one of the drivers prefer it,” groused Lando Norris, a Briton who drives for McLaren. Undeterred, Liberty introduced that the bombastic pre-race sequence can be featured at a number of extra grands prix this yr.

In the US, F1 has lengthy been related to a sure European mystique. Its drivers race throughout the Ardennes forest (Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium), the plains of Lombardy (Italy’s Autodromo Nazionale di Monza) and, most famously, the louche glamour of the Monaco Grand Prix. The game’s stateside picture might be summed up by the 2006 comedy, “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,” which featured Sacha Baron Cohen as a pretentious French F1 driver named Jean Girard, a snooty Eurotrash foil to Will Ferrell’s macho NASCAR cowboy.

In 2023, F1 can really feel a bit extra Ricky Bobby than Jean Girard. In Miami, drivers circled a monitor constructed within the car parking zone of the Dolphins soccer stadium, previous a synthetic Monaco-style “harbor”: blue-painted asphalt topped with ersatz yachts. A brand new Las Vegas race in November could have automobiles zooming down the Strip previous Caesars Palace. In the meantime, conventional races in France and Germany are gone.

Katy Fairman, a journalist primarily based in Brighton, England, who runs the F1 podcast “Small Torque,” stated she was shocked by the spectacle when she attended a race in Austin, Texas. “There have been ladies with pompoms,” she stated. “I bear in mind watching it and pondering, Oh my gosh, that is so totally different from something I’d seen F1 do in a very long time.”

Ms. Fairman conceded that some Europeans discover the American hullabaloo “cheesy.” However she added: “When it’s one thing to do with America, I feel Europeans are fairly judgmental. I feel it’s only a little bit of lighthearted enjoyable. You guys prefer to have a celebration.”

The arrival of Mr. Sargeant, who grew up about an hour’s drive from the Miami racetrack, has spurred new curiosity, together with a profile and picture shoot in GQ, and he’s glad to play the half. “What’s up America, let’s carry that vitality!” he shouted to the cameras after LL Cool J launched him as “the native boy achieved good.”

However as with F1, there are rising pains. In Miami, Mr. Sargeant completed final, his race ruined on the primary lap when he broken a entrance wing. After the checkered flag, he apologized to his crew, his voice barely a whisper: “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine it.”

Weeks earlier, in an interview in England, Mr. Sargeant had demurred in regards to the strain of carrying the celebs and stripes. “I attempt to not get too caught up within the speak of the position of ‘first American,’” he stated. “It’s nonetheless very early for me, and I’ve lots to study nonetheless.”

If Mr. Sargeant doesn’t carry out, there are dozens of drivers wanting to take his spot. “In the intervening time,” he stated, “I simply have to fret about staying right here.”

‘I simply need to get again within the gymnasium.’

Earlier than his powerful Miami weekend, Mr. Sargeant was requested how he would rejoice a high 10 end. “Actually, it’d sound lame, however most likely simply return to my home and get in my mattress for an additional evening earlier than I am going again to London,” he replied. “That’s all I need to do.”

For a rich, good-looking, globe-trotting athlete, Mr. Sargeant could be soft-spoken and endearingly self-conscious. It’s commonplace for somebody who, like a tennis prodigy or Olympian gymnast, has devoted their life since childhood to a sole pursuit.

Mr. Sargeant was 6 when he and his brother Dalton bought a kart from their dad and mom for Christmas. “Nobody within the household was actually even that a lot into racing,” Logan stated. “We simply picked it up as a interest, one thing to do on the weekend.” He started successful junior races across the nation — too simply. To succeed in the following degree and pursue Components 1, he’d have to depart behind his mates and beloved fishing excursions for all times on a special continent: “We simply wanted the next degree of competitors, and on the finish of the day, that was in Europe.”

Mr. Sargeant left Florida earlier than his thirteenth birthday, bouncing between Italy, Switzerland and Britain as he raced on the European junior circuit; in 2015, he grew to become the primary American to win the Karting World Championship since 1978. “As a child, it was powerful,” he recalled. “Coming from Florida, being open air on a regular basis on the water, nice climate — it was actually vice versa.” He ultimately settled in London, the place he spends most days understanding with a coach. “I get away from a race weekend, and I simply need to get again within the gymnasium,” he stated. “I hate that feeling of leaving slack on the desk.”

It’s extremely troublesome to nab a seat in Components 1. Right this moment’s drivers are bodily dynamos skilled to optimize their reflexes and efficiency ranges all the way down to how nicely they’ll face up to jet lag — important in a sport that this yr will embody 23 grands prix unfold over 5 continents. F1 groups make use of tons of of staff and spend tons of of tens of millions of {dollars} growing the world’s most refined racecars. Nevertheless it’s finally as much as the driving force to execute.

It additionally helps to have cash. Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time world champion and F1’s solely Black driver, is an exception, having grown up on a London council property. Many F1 opponents are the sons of multimillionaires (and a few billionaires) who can bankroll expensive journey and high-tech automobiles.

Mr. Sargeant falls into the scion class. He hails from a rich Florida asphalt delivery household. His uncle, Harry Sargeant III, is a former fighter pilot and onetime finance chair of Florida’s Republican Get together who has been sued by the brother-in-law of King Abdullah II of Jordan and whose title turned up, tangentially, within the 2020 impeachment of former President Donald J. Trump. (Harry was not accused of any wrongdoing.)

Logan’s father, Daniel Sargeant, labored alongside Harry till the brothers had a falling out. In a 2013 lawsuit, Harry accused Daniel of misdirecting $6.5 million in company funds “for the aim of advancing the worldwide cart racing actions” of his sons, Logan and Dalton; that litigation was ultimately settled.

In 2019, Daniel Sargeant pleaded responsible in federal court docket in New York to overseas bribery and cash laundering fees associated to his enterprise dealings overseas. He’s free on a $5 million bond and is awaiting sentencing. A Williams spokesman stated that Logan Sargeant was not “ready to remark” on any of the authorized issues involving his household.

In F1, none of this notably stands out. The mom of Mr. Sargeant’s Williams teammate, Alexander Albon, was jailed in Britain for swindling tens of millions of kilos in fraudulent gross sales of high-end automobiles. A Russian racer, Nikita Mazepin, was booted from the game after his oligarch father, a detailed ally of President Vladimir V. Putin, was sanctioned following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

James Vowles, the Williams crew principal, stated in an interview that he employed Mr. Sargeant for his velocity, not his U.S. passport. “I’m extremely happy that the game is rising in America, however I feel it might be something however disingenuous to say that Logan’s right here for some other purpose than I feel he’s bought this pure expertise,” he stated.

In his F1 debut in Bahrain in March, Mr. Sargeant completed twelfth, outpacing this yr’s two different rookies. “He has this insatiable need to be higher, to need extra,” Mr. Vowles stated. “He’s a perfectionist, and I like that in him.”

Tooting round in a Vauxhall Astra

Britain, the place Components 1 originated in 1950, stays the game’s non secular house, the place most of its 10 groups are primarily based. Williams was based in Oxfordshire within the Nineteen Seventies, however it’s now an American subsidiary: a Manhattan non-public fairness agency, Dorilton Capital, purchased the corporate in 2020 for an estimated $200 million.

It was an vital money infusion for a crew that had struggled to maintain up with rivals. Producers like Mercedes-Benz pour monumental assets into their F1 groups, which double as an elaborate world advertising and marketing marketing campaign and an in-house innovation farm; tech developed for F1, like engines that recycle braking vitality as an accelerant, can trickle into shopper automobiles.

The Williams campus is a humdrum brick pile that might be mistaken for an workplace park — a far cry from McLaren’s space-age advanced an hour’s drive away. Many F1 groups present their drivers with a high-end sports activities automotive for private use; Mr. Sargeant commutes in a Vauxhall Astra, a compact.

Even the crew’s sponsors are comparatively down-market; whereas the official watch of Ferrari is Richard Mille (beginning worth: $60,000), Williams has a cope with Bremont, whose timepieces retail for considerably much less. (On a current go to, a Williams press aide was fast to extract a spare Bremont watch from his pocket and guarantee Mr. Sargeant was carrying it each time a photographer hovered.)

Given the massive prices, company partnerships are essential to F1, a part of the rationale the American market, with its abundance of prosperous shoppers and rich manufacturers, has proved so tempting. Gerald Donaldson, a journalist who has coated F1 for 45 years, recalled how automobiles have been step by step taken over by company logos beginning within the late Nineteen Sixties.

“Marlboro paid all of the Ferrari payments, together with the drivers, for a few years,” he stated in an interview. “There are keen firms who need the publicity.” Mr. Sargeant’s automotive options adverts for Michelob Extremely beer and an American monetary agency, Stephens. In Miami final weekend, beachgoers noticed an airborne banner studying “Go Logan!” alongside the picture of a Duracell battery.

Final yr, the Miami race was considered on ABC by 2.6 million individuals, the most important American viewers for a reside F1 telecast. Rankings for this yr’s race fell about 25 p.c, maybe a results of a duller-than-usual season dominated by one crew, Purple Bull.

Nonetheless, viewing knowledge present that F1 is increasing past prosperous cities related to elite sports activities: In 2022, its high 5 American TV markets included Asheville, N.C., and Tulsa, Okla. ESPN is clearly betting on extra development. When the sports activities community renewed its broadcast rights final yr, it agreed to pay $90 million yearly — up from the $5 million-a-year deal it signed in 2019.

Liam Parker, a former adviser to Boris Johnson who now leads communications at F1, stated the game was intent on rectifying previous errors. “We have been too smug,” he stated. “We couldn’t perceive why the American fan base wasn’t falling in love with us.” However he additionally pushed again on the complaints that Liberty’s efforts to lift the leisure issue had stripped F1 of one thing important.

“This complete argument of ‘Americanization,’ it’s a really crude option to describe issues,” he stated. “We shouldn’t ignore issues that may enhance issues for brand spanking new and core followers. It’s about giving individuals extra decisions within the trendy period. It’s modernization of entry to everybody.”

Mr. Hamilton, arguably the most important celeb of the present F1 lineup, has supplied his personal endorsement of Liberty’s method. “I imply jeez, I grew up listening to LL Cool J,” he informed reporters in Miami. “I believed it was cool, wasn’t a difficulty to me.”

For all of the debates over elitism, good style and company rap collaborations, the core enchantment of F1, if you get proper all the way down to it, could also be one thing less complicated — one thing Mr. Sargeant bought at when requested within the interview if he had beloved automobiles as a child.

“I completely love driving, as you may think about,” he stated. “However to be trustworthy, I’m not a type of individuals who research automobiles and, you realize, likes to know each element of each single automotive. It doesn’t actually curiosity me.”

“The half that pursuits me,” he concluded, “is driving them as quick as I can go.”

Eliza Shapiro contributed reporting from Miami. Kitty Bennett contributed analysis.