With the 2024 FIA Formula 3 season now less than two months away, many drivers have been announced to be taking the next step in their careers and joining one of the most important championships on the feeder series ladder. One of them is Max Esterson. The American will graduate from GB3 for his first full-time Formula 3 campaign, joining Jenzer Motorsport in 2024. The 21-year-old spoke to Feeder Series about his previous F3 experience, the upcoming season and his sim racing background.

By Daniele Spadi

Born in New York City, Esterson didn’t have the chance to gather as much on-track experience as his competitors; the 21-year-old relied on the next best thing, sim racing. He quickly became one of the fastest virtual racers in the world on platforms like iRacing, enjoying great runs of form and becoming one of the top 35 drivers in the entire world out of hundreds of thousands of users.

However, he admitted that switching to real-life racing wasn’t in the back of his mind at that time.

 “Not because I didn’t want to, but more just because it seemed like such a distant possibility that almost wasn’t even possible, it was just so far out of the way,” he said.

“I never thought it would happen because I grew up in New York City, and there’s no karting in New York or anything like that. So it just didn’t seem like something I would do, it was more just something I would watch. So at the start, no, it wasn’t really planned.” 

In 2021, however, opportunities started to come towards him, and he took them with both hands, finishing third in the National Formula Ford Championship and winning the Walter Hayes Trophy, the year-end Formula Ford grand finale at Silverstone.

A first taste of single-seater experience

In 2022, Esterson took the next step in his career, joining Douglas Motorsport for his maiden GB3 campaign. In his rookie season, Esterson took a win at Donington and two further podium finishes on his way to seventh place in the drivers’ standings, consistently beating his teammates and showing promising signs. 

He stayed in the championship in 2023, leaving Douglas Motorsport and switching to Fortec. However, the season didn’t go as planned, and many mechanical failures and some misfortune led him to finish 11th overall with just one podium to his name,  once again at Donington.

Esterson also had the chance to make his official Formula 3 debut in the 2023 season, subbing in for Hunter Yeany at Rodin Carlin for two rounds of the championship, racing at  Silverstone and Hungaroring. He had a promising first outing in Great Britain, proving to be faster than his teammates and learning about the car and the series as much as possible. 

“I mean, first off, it’s just much heavier,” Esterson told Feeder Series about the main differences between the GB3 car and the Formula 3 car. 

“I think it’s 100 kilos heavier than the GB3 car. I think the GB3 car is probably one of the fastest small cars, with not too much downforce or weight. It’s a different style; you can throw the car around more, you can slide and get away with it, whereas this car has a lot more grip and weight and downforce. So it’s more stuck, I guess you could say.”

“Then the other thing is just the tyre and the tyre warm up in that whole sequence,” he added. “In GB3, it’s like old-style F3, where to warm up, you just drive; you just keep driving, and it gets better and better until a point. 

“In F3, you do this whole thing where you crawl around the track warming up very slowly for two laps, and then you have to push and you only get one lap. That’s the hardest thing to get used to, and obviously it’s a big skill to have. You do practise in the morning, and then you have qualifying six hours later, and you need to perform on that one lap. It’s very tricky because the warm-up laps, you’re crawling around, going very slowly, trying to make space. And then you have that one lap after not driving for six hours, so it’s pretty tricky.”

Lots of track time in the off-season

Esterson enjoyed a pretty busy end of the 2023 season, as he took part in Formula 3’s post-season testing with Jenzer Motorsport before joining the Swiss team for the 70th Macau Grand Prix, an experience like no other in the feeder series world. 

“It was crazy,” Esterson told Feeder Series. “It’s definitely the wildest track I’ve ever been to. And honestly, when you get there, and you walk the track, it doesn’t seem possible because of how tight it is and how bumpy it is. But yeah, it’s my favourite track I’ve ever driven.”

The 21-year-old got unlucky in qualifying with some poorly-timed red flags, which is always a factor around Macau, but his race performance was definitely positive, as he climbed his way up to sixteenth in the qualifying race and made a good run for the top 10 in the main event before an incident forced him to change his front wing, dropping to twentieth in the process. 

“Obviously [it was] a really strong field, so it was pretty difficult, but I was pretty happy with the progress I made over the days there. It was the same for everyone, but there’s so many red flags, so you don’t actually get that much driving to learn.

“When you get to even the straight after the first corner, and then you go through Mandarin, then you’re flat and you’re doing like 265 or something. And it’s so bumpy, you could barely see! The barrier is going by really fast, and then you’d open DRS, and you’re flying. Then the middle part of the lap is super flowy and fast; in the S’s, you’re almost flat, and you almost feel like you’re going to touch the inside walls each time, and you almost have to aim to hit them.”

Macau is such a unique track in the feeder series world, and Esterson spoke about its peculiarities with a big smile on his face. 

“It’s really cool, the flow is unreal,” he told Feeder Series. “I think such an elevation change for a street track is crazy. I don’t know if it shows up well on TV, but when you’re walking the track and when you’re driving, there’s so much elevation change, which I guess is rare for a street track.”

A big opportunity in 2024

After his work with Jenzer throughout the tail end of 2023, Esterson has been announced to stay with the Swiss outfit for his maiden full-time campaign in Formula 3, a huge opportunity for the American to shine and compete against some of the finest talents currently trying to climb the junior single-seater ladder. 

“Yeah, it’s been really good so far,” he said when talking about his experience with the team. “They obviously had a very strong year last year. They’re a smaller team, but obviously they have really good experience and know what they’re doing, so yeah, it’s been nice to work. There’s obviously advantages to a small team, too: it’s a nice family environment, and everyone gets along well. It’s a nice place to be. Obviously they showed last year they could do well, so there’s no excuses from my side, really.”

One of Formula 3’s most acclaimed peculiarities is its calendar, full of renowned race tracks that many drivers will likely find themselves competing on throughout the next steps of their career. 

“I think everyone probably says Monaco,” he told Feeder Series when asked about the track he’s looking forward to driving around the most. 

“But honestly, I really like Silverstone. I’ve done so many laps there, and it doesn’t really get old for me, even though I’ve done so much there. And having driven some of the European circuits now, I still think it holds up as one of the best.”

However, for someone like Esterson, who has very little European experience outside his time in GB3, this could prove to be a further obstacle, as learning a new track in Formula 3 is a very challenging task. 

“The sim helps, and you have to do as much as you can to be ready. In Hungary last year, for example, even though you have a 45 minute-session, you can’t use all 45 minutes the way the tyres are because you need to save some for quality. And plus, you have to count for red flags, too. 

I think I had two or three laps before the tyres were completely dead. There’s not really a point in pounding around, trying to learn, because when you do that, the tyres go so far off that it’s not like the real thing, even in the end. I think when you’re learning a track, it’s tempting to pound around and do a lot of laps, but it’s not really possible.”

Header photo credit: Jakob Ebrey