THE AMERICAN DREAM NEARS REALITY
There has never been a full-time British driver in the NASCAR Cup. But Alex Sedgwick, who is rising the stock car ladder, wants that to change
Take a look at the results from last weekend’s
NASCAR Cup season-opening Daytona 500, and you’ll find just one non-american on the list. Only three drivers from outside the US have ever won NASCAR Cup races – and even then, they were either from North or South America. And there has never been a full-time British racer in the series. It’s therefore clear that Alex Sedgwick’s ambition to race in the category is pretty unusual for a European, let alone British, driver. But, as he closes in on a part-season deal in the second-tier Xfinity Series, it’s also clear that he’s determined to make that ambition a reality.
Ever since his karting days, Sedgwick has aspired to sample NASCAR machinery in the States, and he finally ticked that box last year when he made his debut in the ARCA West (the equivalent on the stock car ladder of what Formula 4 is to F1) series finale at Phoenix. But getting to that point has been far from straightforward, and Sedgwick admits he has enjoyed some good fortune.
“The two big things I’ve always wanted to do are endurance racing and NASCAR,” he says. “The reason I got into racing was from going to Le Mans as a kid, and that’s what made me want to start karting. For whatever reason, it’s hard to follow NASCAR over here – I just fell across it through watching TV, on Youtube and reading Autosport. My interest grew and I always thought it was cool racing.
“Even young, naive Alex in karting would send emails to
NASCAR teams saying, ‘I want to be a driver with you!’, he adds. “The hardest thing is finding the entry point. It’s not like you can go and race Late Models at Snetterton!”
And that is why Sedgwick’s racing career began on a more conventional path. He was able to make the switch from karting to car competition after winning the Ginetta Junior scholarship for the 2014 season. At that point, what had just been a fun weekend pastime for Sedgwick became something far more significant.
“All the way through karting, it was never, ‘I’m going to be a racing driver’, it wasn’t a massive plan, it was just what we did as a family,” he recalls. “Winning the scholarship meant it was like, ‘This is a bit more serious now!’. It was a huge moment and a turning point – it went from a hobby to, ‘Maybe we could make something out of this’.
“No matter what your plan is, going from karts to cars is a huge shift, not only in actual driving but just in how you approach things. There’s a lot more to worry about! With us, all through karting, even if we were racing with a team, me and Dad would build the kart throughout the week, we’d transport ourselves, and then all of a sudden you’re in a world of dealing with sponsors and hospitality and making sure they have a return on them going racing and figuring out a car you’ve never driven anything like before. You’re nearly starting from scratch again.”
Nevertheless, Sedgwick feels Ginetta Junior was the perfect place to carry out that learning. Driving for the JHR Developments
squad, he took a best result of fourth and was 10th in the standings.
“It was the best place I could’ve learned in terms of being able to learn really quickly and get the basics,” he says. “It’s an intense year but, being on the TOCA package, you do get quite a lot of track time. As a place to learn and develop, it’s such a brilliant series, and it proves that with all the people who have gone on and done other stuff from it.”
Sedgwick then had a brief foray into French Formula 4 in 2015, but was primarily focused on his GCSE exams before securing a Renault UK Clio Cup drive with Cooksport later in the year, when he became the youngest driver on the grid, aged 16. Endurance racing then beckoned and he got to drive a Clio in the Dubai 24 Hours in 2016 with Preptech – he was the second youngest in the field – and further opportunities then followed with Cooksport.
All the while, the NASCAR dream remained, and Sedgwick made the next step towards that when he entered the Euro NASCAR driver recruitment programme and secured funding from the series to make his debut in 2018.
“They selected a couple of drivers from 120 applicants and they put some funding in,” he says. “Similar to the Ginetta Junior scholarship, I was in the right place at the right time. That was the big turning point, because I was able to get to race a NASCAR and get that box ticked but, because of having the support of Euro Series, you could put it all together to go racing and pay for it.
“The Euro Series is such a great starting point. The car’s comparable to the US cars but Euro Series is a lot more tame, a lot more approachable and beginner-friendly. You can figure out a stock car in a familiar environment of driving on road courses. But you’re not going to jump in and be top five straight away. The best thing for me was we jumped into the [top] Elite 1 category and I threw myself in at the deep end. It was a good way to learn and test myself on track with Bobby Labonte and Jacques Villeneuve.”
Sedgwick spent much of that first season at the Braxx Racing squad, alongside Marc Goossens. He took a best result of fifth and admits it was surreal racing alongside drivers he had grown up watching. “Marc raced at Le Mans 13 times and I’m calling him before races asking what to do!” Sedgwick continues. “I was racing against people who are already big names rather than people who are going on to be big names.
“The Euro Series was the foot in the door, the first step of something much bigger. I could stop and say I’ve raced a NASCAR, but I’m one of those people who always wants more. From when I started racing in the Euro Series, I was finding out where we could
“I WAS THAT GUY, I ALWAYS WANTED TO RACE IN NASCAR BUT HAD NO IDEA WHERE TO START”
go and what we could do. I made the effort to embed myself with NASCAR – with representatives at races and I let them use me for anything they could. From being in that environment and generating the right connections, and doing a good enough job on track, opportunities on the commercial side and on the race team side have come about.”
And, having enjoyed further strong Euro NASCAR results in 2019, that all led to the ARCA West drive with Bill Mcanally Racing. It was a massive opportunity for the 21-year-old, particularly as he was racing at the same event where NASCAR legend Jimmie Johnson was making his final appearance.
“I was straight in at the deep end, with it being the last round of the championship,” says Sedgwick. “Cup drivers and Xfinity drivers were turning up to get more track time and, with COVID, there was no practice and I had never driven the car before – it was pretty intense. It took a bit of time to get my head around everything.
“You can prepare as much as you like – Joey Logano’s spotter TJ Majors was coaching me with iracing before the race – but there’s only so much you can do in practice. From the halfway point of the race, it all started to click and from there we were the fastest car in my team and one of my team-mates won the championship – and we caught and passed and cleared off from him.”
In the end, Sedgwick finished 13th and believes it was a “pretty successful” debut. The target now is to build up his experience and get approval to race on all types of track. He intends to contest the majority of the Xfinity road course events and as many ARCA rounds as he can and, last month, he headed back out to the US to take part in the ARCA pre-season test at Daytona.
Sedgwick feels now is the perfect time for him to be competing in the US series, as the number of road course events is increasing, meaning he’s at less of a disadvantage compared to the experienced American oval racers. But he also realises the importance of being strong on the multitude of different venue types on the schedules.
“You have to be so adaptable – there’s ovals and road courses, and superspeedways and intermediates,” Sedgwick says. “Every track is different, every time you jump in the car it can be different. The aim is to bank as much knowledge and experience as I can.
“To get to the starting point from, ‘I want to go and race in the US’ to that first race in Phoenix it was five or six years, and now everything seems to be happening so quick. Next year, I’m hoping to do as many Xfinity races as I can, if not a full calendar.”
While he is very much concentrating on his own career, Sedgwick is also aware that he is something of a trailblazer and showing other British youngsters what’s possible. “It’s cool that even since I started in the Euro Series, I don’t think I’m a role model, but people have messaged me to say, ‘I didn’t think NASCAR was an option and you’ve shown it can be done’,” he says. “I was that guy. I always wanted to race in NASCAR but had no idea what to do or where to start. NASCAR is so cool and I’m a huge fan, just to watch it, let alone being a part of that. I think it’s underappreciated over here but, in reality, there’s so much going on that no one knows about.”
NASCAR is never going to be every British motorsport fan’s cup of tea. But having a British name among the Daytona 500 results could certainly spark further interest in the series on these shores, and perhaps the idea of UK racers targeting it as a career path will not seem quite so unusual in years to come.