{"id":5840,"date":"2023-05-01T09:05:01","date_gmt":"2023-05-01T13:05:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/?p=5840"},"modified":"2023-05-02T09:11:46","modified_gmt":"2023-05-02T13:11:46","slug":"impressive-weekend-for-crawford-in-baku","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/2023\/05\/01\/impressive-weekend-for-crawford-in-baku\/","title":{"rendered":"Impressive Weekend for Crawford in Baku"},"content":{"rendered":"

BAKU, Azerbaijan (1 May 2023) \u2013 Rising star Jak Crawford had another impressive\u00a0weekend in FIA Formula 2 Championship competition, scoring both a Sprint podium and points-paying Feature finish in the Grand Prix of Azerbaijan.<\/p>\n

The Texan Red Bull Junior Team driver took third in Saturday\u2019s Sprint race, and then had a steady drive to take 9h in Sunday\u2019s Feature. Entering the weekend with eight points, Crawford added seven more points to his total following an incident-free event.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a good weekend for us, with another podium, which is good to see,\u201d Crawford said. \u201cI would like to score more points in the Feature race \u2013 I feel we have potential to score a lot more points \u2013 and I think it\u2019s only a matter of time before we figure things out.\u201d<\/p>\n

After running 14th in opening practice, Crawford put himself in position by qualifying seventh.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were just a bit unlucky in practice,\u201d he explained. \u201cOur speed was there, straightaway, but I got a bit unlucky timing the red flag, and I never got to display my speed in practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

In qualifying, Crawford was 11th at the start of his final lap, but shot up to second at the checkered flag with a lap of 1:53.139-seconds. He fell to seventh in a wild finish that saw the top spot change hands several times, eventually missing the pole by only 0.487-seconds.<\/p>\n

\u201cQualifying went well, and I felt I maximized everything out of the car,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were still four- or five-tenths off, but it was our best qualifying of the season so far. We are definitely improving as a team, and I myself as well. It was quite a good last lap, but I was thinking we were a little bit better than seventh at the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crawford managed to miss a melee at the start of Saturday\u2019s Sprint race, falling to fifth on a safety car intervention.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a wild start,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were right in the thick of it. The Sprint race was crazy at the beginning, and then it was nice and calm in the middle of the race. Then it got crazy again at the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was sixth at the first restart, and ran in that position when a pair of safety car periods slowed the action in the closing lap. He had a great restart with three laps remaining \u2013 moving to third and was challenging for second when a race-ending caution waved after the top-two competitors \u2013 and many behind them \u2013 piled up at the restart.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got lucky at the end,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was no gap; there was Styrofoam flying in my face! I was minding my own business, and everyone crashed and I was third. I wish they let us race until the end of the lap, because I think I could have gotten second position, but I\u2019m super-happy with third.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crawford started seventh for Sunday\u2019s Feature race, which got off to a clean start as he made a good pass to take sixth. He held that position through the 13th lap, when he pitted to move from super-soft tires to the medium compound.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe opening laps went really good for us, and I was feeling confident,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were fighting for a top-five position, which is where we wanted to be. But when we went out on the medium tire, we had no warm-up and lost a lot of time. At the end, the pace was OK, but we lost too much time building up the tires. We were quick at the finish, but we just missed it at the middle of the race with the tires, and that cost us a lot of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next up for the F2 competitors is Imola on May 20-21.<\/p>\n

\u201cImola is my favorite track, and I\u2019ve had good results there,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m going into there really confident, with another podium in the bag, and I can\u2019t wait for the weekend. I think it will be very good.\u201d<\/p>\n

###
\nImages via Red Bull Content Pool<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BAKU, Azerbaijan (1 May 2023) \u2013 Rising star Jak Crawford had another impressive\u00a0weekend in FIA Formula 2 Championship competition, scoring both a Sprint podium and points-paying [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5841,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-jak-crawford-racing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5840","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=5840"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5842,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5840\/revisions\/5842"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}