Late Race Charge leads to F2 podium for Crawford in Austria

American F1 hopeful moves to third in standings at midway point
SPIELBERG, Austria (29 June 2025) – Jak Crawford closed out a challenging weekend with a late-race charge to a third place result in the Feature Race at Red Bull Ring, Round 7 of the FIA Formula 2 Championship.

Fifth at the checkered flag, a pair of penalties elevated Crawford to his fourth podium finish of the season. The results saw the DAMS Lucas Oil driver gain a position to rank third in the championship, only two points behind second, as the F2 campaign reached its halfway point.

Sunday’s strong result was a turnaround from Saturday, where an alternator problem stranded him on the grid and prevented him from even starting the Sprint Race.

Gridded 14th in Sunday’s Feature Race, Crawford gained three positions on the opening lap. Starting on super-soft tires, he pitted for the soft compound and returned to the race in 19th.

He bided his time, waiting for the five cars running the alternate tire strategy to make their mandatory pit stop to switch to super-softs.

“I think I knew that it was best to stay in position and focus on the longer stint on the soft tire, which is quite long here,” he explained.

Biding his time, he was 10th with 10 laps remaining in the 40-lap Feature Race. Coming down the stretch, Crawford passed two championship contenders in the closing laps. He was up to seventh with two laps left, and then caught and passed two more cars to reach fifth on the closing lap, which produced a podium result following the post-race penalties for two cars that had crossed the line ahead of Crawford.

“It was a bit of a surprised, with the post-race penalties moving me up to third,” Crawford said. “It was a good race. I was saving my tires, and then I picked my way past when everyone else’s tires started to go off. Everything worked in our favor. It was a good race – quite smooth as well. I didn’t feel I had to do a lot to get the good result.”

The weekend started on a high note when he ran strong in practice. Crawford led the opening half of the session and was second in the closing minutes, eventually placing fifth.

“Practice was good and we had a good car straightaway,” he said, “I think there was even more to come.”

Qualifying, however, was a struggle. He was 10th when he made his pit stop. He was third with five minutes remaining, but wound up 15th.

“We just got it wrong a little bit in qualifying,” Crawford said. “I was able to get the tires in the right window over a single lap, but the margin is so close at this track that I was only five-tenths off pole, but down in 15th.”

An opponent’s grid penalty elevated Crawford to 14th for both races. His car failed to start at the beginning of the formation lap of Saturday’s Sprint Race. He was pushed back and could have started from pit road, but the issue proved to be terminal.

“I had an alternator failure right before the start of the race,” he explained. “The alternator had caught on fire, so there was no way that we were going to restart. We wanted to make sure that the engine was not damaged.”

Next up is Crawford’s home race this weekend at Silverstone, where he finished sixth in the Sprint and third in the feature last year.

“I’m super excited for Silverstone,” he said. “I won the Feature Race on track last year on track before getting a penalty. It was a great race. We were really fast, and it’s a track I really enjoy. It’s like my ‘second home’ race, and I’m looking forward to it.”