{"id":7273,"date":"2024-07-08T14:20:21","date_gmt":"2024-07-08T18:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/?p=7273"},"modified":"2024-07-08T14:20:21","modified_gmt":"2024-07-08T18:20:21","slug":"strong-silverstone-weekend-as-crawford-back-on-f2-podium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/08\/strong-silverstone-weekend-as-crawford-back-on-f2-podium\/","title":{"rendered":"Strong Silverstone weekend as Crawford back on F2 podium"},"content":{"rendered":"

Crosses line in first but post-race penalty costs American second Feature Race victory<\/em><\/p>\n

SILVERSTONE, England (8\u00a0July 2024) \u2013 Jak Crawford scored a third-place finish in Sunday’s Feature Race at Silverstone, wrapping up his third-consecutive double-points finish as the FIA Formula 2 Championship entered the second half of the 2024 season.<\/p>\n

It was a productive but bittersweet weekend for the 19-year-old American Formula 1 hopeful. Crawford was the first driver to take the checkered flag on Sunday after a strong drive to the front, but a five-second penalty for an unsafe pit release dropped him to third \u2013 as he missed out on another Feature race victory by just 1.8-seconds, and second place by only one-tenth of a second.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a perfect race,\u201d said the DAMS Lucas Oil driver. \u201cIt was a good drive, good pace but unfortunate for the penalty, of course. I feel I did everything right. We had lots of speed, and we were clearly the quickest car. Without the penalty, it would have been one that I would remember forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gridded seventh on soft tires, Crawford used an outside pass to quickly move to fourth as rain began to fall on the circuit. A pair of incidents led to two safety car periods in the early laps, and he was second when he made his mandatory pit stop on Lap 9 to switch to the harder-compound tire.<\/p>\n

Following a quick stop, the Texan just edged a competitor out of the pits, but was noted for an unsafe release as he rejoined the race in 14th\u00a0position.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a bit unfortunate how the rules worked, because he wasn\u2019t even in the fast lane when they released my lollypop,\u201d he explained. \u201cIt was safe, because there was no one in the fast lane, but because of the dynamic of how it works, it was a penalty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crawford made the move of the race on Lap 19, passing two cars to take the effective race lead behind cars still to make their mandatory stops. At the same time, though, a five-second penalty for the pit infraction was posted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat pass was pretty sweet,\u201d Crawford said. \u201cI could see it happening ahead, I could see I would have an opportunity. I was saving my tires up until that point, and then \u2013 all of a sudden \u2013 I found myself in the [virtual] race lead. Then I could push maximum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crawford charged for the final 11 laps, setting several fastest race laps in the process. He took the actual race lead with two laps remaining, pushing all the way to attempt to gap his rivals for the podium.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter I made the pass [for the virtual race lead}, I didn\u2019t do one bit of saving,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was flat out until the end. I could see them in my mirrors, so I knew it wasn\u2019t five seconds, but I knew I was on the podium anyway, so I might as well send it off and make up as much time as possible. At the end, it was super close. In a normal race, if they issued the penalty after the race, they wouldn\u2019t have been pushing so much and I could have taken the win despite the penalty. I only just missed out by a tenth of a second on P2.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crawford\u2019s run to the Feature race followed a strong performance in Saturday\u2019s sprint, held in extremely challenging rainy conditions that led to a midrace red flag. He started fourth and ran in the top-six throughout the race to take sixth at the finish.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a bit chaotic, and really wet at some points,\u201d he said. \u201cWe struggled a little bit with the car. It was a small error that made a big difference in how the tires degraded, and it won\u2019t happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seventh in rainy opening practice, Crawford managed to place seventh in qualifying, moving from 15th\u00a0to sixth in the final four minutes.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur main thing to fix is our qualifying,\u201d he said. \u201cWe haven\u2019t been performing the best, and qualifying is very important. We\u2019ll get on our best game to make that good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crawford ends a stretch of three-consecutive race weekends with six top-10 finishes. He finished fourth and took his first F2 Feature Race victory at Barcelona, and then was sixth and 10th\u00a0at Spielberg. The mid-season surge netted 52 points, moving him to sixth in the championship with 84 counters.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems we have the best points streak at the moment, with three strong weekends in a row and two Feature Race wins on track \u2013 but only one stood. It\u2019s been a strong three weeks, and it\u2019s still pretty close in the points with six rounds to go. Anything can happen, and there\u2019s no reason why we can\u2019t be confident for the rest of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s only a one-week break before competition resumes with another stretch of back-to-back events. Next up is Hungaroring in Budapest on July 20-21, followed by Belgium\u2019s Spa-Francorchamps on July 27-28.<\/p>\n

\u201cHungaroring will come up quick, even though we have a week off. It suits our car well, especially in the race, and I think we can fight for another Feature Race win.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Crosses line in first but post-race penalty costs American second Feature Race victory SILVERSTONE, England (8\u00a0July 2024) \u2013 Jak Crawford scored a third-place finish in Sunday’s [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7274,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7273","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\/7273","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=7273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7275,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7273\/revisions\/7275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}