{"id":5097,"date":"2022-09-12T16:38:22","date_gmt":"2022-09-12T16:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/?p=5097"},"modified":"2022-09-13T16:41:50","modified_gmt":"2022-09-13T16:41:50","slug":"crawford-closes-f3-championship-on-monza-podium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/2022\/09\/12\/crawford-closes-f3-championship-on-monza-podium\/","title":{"rendered":"Crawford Closes F3 Championship on Monza Podium"},"content":{"rendered":"
MONZA, Italy (12\u00a0Sept. 2022)<\/strong> \u2013 American Formula One hopeful Jak Crawford finished the FIA Formula 3 Championship with a podium finish, placing third in Sunday\u2019s Feature Race at Autodromo Nazionale Monza. The 17-year-old Red Bull Junior Team driver closed out the season-ending weekend with a pair of points-paying finishes for the second-consecutive event, having finishing seventh in Saturday\u2019s Sprint Race.<\/div>\n
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Crawford\u2019s 2022 campaign saw the young American demonstrate impressive pace\u00a0during the 18-race season on his way to seventh in the overall championship standings, with seven drivers less than 30 points from the championship lead, any one, including Jak could have won. Having claimed his first F3 victory in the Sprint Race at Red Bull Ring, Crawford\u2019s points haul helped his Prema Racing squad win the F3 team title.<\/div>\n
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\u201cIt was a really good way to end the season on a good note,\u201d Crawford said. \u201cAfter getting four podiums in the first 10 races, it was great to end the season back up there today.\u201d<\/div>\n
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The two weekends previous to Monza hosted race weekends at both Spa in Belgium and Zandvoort in The Netherlands. \u00a0Jak\u2019s string of bad luck leading up to those events continued, but this time the errors were more self-inflicted, really hurting his chance to make a real push for the championship in Monza.\u00a0 The speed was there in both Spa and Zandvoort but driving mistakes at key moments hurt Jak\u2019s ultimate championship goals. With the lead pack of seven drivers so tight, there was no room for mistakes.<\/div>\n
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Then racing at the famed Monza circuit for the final time in F3 for 2022, Crawford was 10th in practice and had a strong finish to the qualifying session to place eighth. Ranked 14th with time running out, Crawford turned a fast lap to get up to third with one-minute, 35-seconds remaining. His time of 1:38.031-seconds was good enough to keep him in the top 10, with a yellow flag spoiling his final lap, which would have been even faster.<\/div>\n
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\u201cIt was hard to tell our speed in practice because it was half-wet, half-dry,\u201d Crawford said. \u201cThis was my first time at Monza, and my car wasn\u2019t really there in the first run of qualifying, even though the speed was all right. We made some changes for the second run and it was a lot better, and we were definitely in the fight for the pole or top three. I got a little unlucky with traffic at the end of my lap. Then there was a red flag, so I got only one push lap on my second run. But qualifying P-8 is not the end of the world, especially at Monza with the long straights.\u201d<\/div>\n
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With the top-12 qualifiers inverted, the Texan started the Sprint Race in fifth. After losing out at the start and running seventh, he worked his way back into the top five following a safety car restart but had to settle for seventh at the finish.<\/div>\n
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\u201cIn the first race we really weren\u2019t that quick,\u201d he said. \u201cWe had good speed, but every time I got into a battle, I was able to make moves but I wasn\u2019t able to keep positions after winning battles.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Sunday\u2019s race saw Crawford start eighth and race up to fifth by lap 15. After running in fourth before a caution for a two-car collision on lap 16, the race wasn\u2019t restarted. With penalties being applied post race, Crawford moved up to be classified third to close out the year with another podium run.<\/div>\n
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\u201cSunday\u2019s race was a lot better,\u201d Crawford explained. \u201cWe changed a lot to the car overnight, and it was definitely a lot better. I had some tire degradation early in the race but we were still quite quick. I lost the DRS to the top three [after taking fourth place], so I was sitting back in fifth, waiting to catch the top three. But in the end, there was a red flag. It was really a shame, because there were two drivers with penalties ahead of me. I got promoted up to third, but I really think if the race had gone on, a win was especially in the cards \u2013 especially with the top two battling for the championship.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Crawford enjoyed his first experience racing at the Italian Grand Prix circuit.<\/div>\n
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\u201cI loved the track,\u201d Crawford said. \u201cIt\u2019s really, really fast, and fun to drive. The racing here is crazy, it\u2019s one like no other. The slipstream is very strong, and the long straights mean there\u2019s lots of battling, overtaking and general chaos.\u201d<\/div>\n
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With the season concluded, Crawford is looking forward to heading back to his home in Texas for 10 days this week.<\/div>\n
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\u201cI\u2019m going to enjoy a few days back home in the U.S., and then I\u2019m going to start to prepare for next season,\u201d he said. \u201cWe just came off a close championship where if things had gone slightly different here or there, I could have won, but it is time to move on,\u00a0 I will be racing in F2 next year, but it will not be officially announced for several months.\u00a0 In fact, my seat fit for the official F2 Abu Dhabi test is this week, and so as one season ends we start preparing immediately for another one.\u201d<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MONZA, Italy (12\u00a0Sept. 2022) \u2013 American Formula One hopeful Jak Crawford finished the FIA Formula 3 Championship with a podium finish, placing third in Sunday\u2019s Feature [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5098,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,9,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-feature","category-jak-crawford-racing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5097"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5102,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5097\/revisions\/5102"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}