Brilliant start sees Crawford drive to F2 victory at Silverstone

Texan closes to second in championship, six points behind leader
SILVERSTONE, England (6 July 2025) – American F1 hopeful Jak Crawford took his third victory of the 2025 FIA Formula 2 Championship campaign at Sunday’s British Grand Prix, dominating Sunday’s Feature Race near his “home away from home” at the Silverstone Circuit.

The victory capped a weekend that saw the 20-year-old Texan finish a solid sixth in Saturday’s Sprint Race after qualifying third for DAMS Lucas Oil, moving up to second in the championship standings, only six points behind the leader.

“Good points,” he said. “It’s great to be in contention and this was a great race to win. Now, we need to keep this momentum, for sure.”

Gridded third on a wet track for the start, Crawford slipped between the front-row cars at lights out in a brilliant start to quickly take the lead in the 29-lap race. He held that advantage throughout the event as the threat of approaching rain hovered over the field in the closing laps.

“The start was great, and got me into the lead,” he said. “I had the perfect launch, and [the pole sitter] barely moved. I just had to split the gap. I had good speed after that. It was nice being able to drive by myself, and not having to come from behind. I just had to manage the gap.”

As the laps wound down, Crawford managed to hold his advantage on the drying – but still slick – circuit, with both the second-place car and potential rain closing in.

“I wish it was a lot more straight forward and was a wet race for the entire race,” he said. “But we knew it was going to start drying out, and we needed to save the tires. The end was super stressful decision as far as what tire to go on. I knew we had to put on dry tires, but my engineer kept telling me that more rain was coming.”

With six laps remaining, Crawford dove to the pits, crossing the commitment line moments before a virtual safety car closed pit road. Crawford took on a set of fresh rain tires. On the following lap, the safety car came out, allowing the remaining cars to pit, setting the stage for a hectic restart with Crawford out front.

“We made the decision to box and put on the wet tires, and it turned out to be perfect,” he explained. “The VSC came out. Then it was chaotic to restart the race. I had good speed on the restart, and I think we would have been fine. Then it started to pour again—what a chaotic race to win!”

Rain started falling just as the caution ended to set up a two-lap sprint to the finish. Crawford had another strong start, and was leading as a car behind him spun to bring out another caution – effectively ending the race.

The race win marked the close to a strong weekend for Crawford, who turned in a sensational final lap in the opening practice, with a slight lockup near the finish keeping him from missing top time of the day by a mere 0.163-seconds.

He then took that momentum to qualifying. He went to the top with six minutes remaining in the 30-minute session, with that time good enough to rank third.

“Practice was strong,” said Crawford. “We were the fastest, and I had two purple sectors on my final lap. Then we were strong in qualifying, as well. It was a pretty solid weekend all around, running pretty consistently up at the front.”

With the top-10 qualifiers inverted for Saturday’s 21-lap Sprint Race, Crawford started eighth and moved to sixth on the opening lap. He held that position despite heavy pressure for the remainder of the event, missing fifth by 0.001-seconds in a side-by-side dash to the checkered flag.

“It was actually boring for a lot of the laps, sitting in a DRS train,” he said. “I had a lot of speed, but not much to do with it. It got quite chaotic at the end, with everyone starting to battle. I managed to keep my position and managed to keep my nose clean.”

Round 9 of the F2 Championship will be held at Belgium’s Spa-Francorchamps on July 26-27 – a track where he finished third in last year’s Feature Race and fifth in the Sprint.

“Spa is a track I like,” he said. “I had good results there last year. Hopefully we can continue that, and continue being consistent.”