Early SC restart costs time and track position for Crawford, who holds second in championship standings ahead of finale
LUSAIL, Qatar (1 Dec, 2025) – Jak Crawford’s strong race pace didn’t pay dividends this weekend in the penultimate round of the FIA Formula 2 Championship, as he placed eighth and 11th in the two races staged at Qatar’s Lusail International Circuit. The 20-year-old Texan – the lone American driver in the F2 Championship – will enter this weekend’s season finale at Yas Island second in the standings.
After a challenging qualifying session, the 20-year-old Texan improved seven positions in Saturday’s Sprint Race to place in the points.
Boxed out at the start in Sunday’s Feature Race, Crawford returned from a slow pit stop in 20th, but once again made multiple challenging passes to work his way back up through the field.
Crawford’s promising charge forward was handicapped by a mid-race safety car intervention, which saw race officials restart the race before the field had collected behind the safety car. This cost Crawford well over 20 seconds to the leader, and significantly affected his opportunity to score points in the Feature.
The DAMS Lucas Oil driver leads all F2 drivers in laps led this season, and is tied for most victories with four, including a series-leading three in Feature Races. He has two poles, eight podiums and 15 top-10 finishes.
“It was an unfortunate weekend, because we were quite fast,” Crawford said. “Not a good weekend, but that happens.”
After placing 10th in Friday practice, Crawford was fourth with under six minutes remaining in that evening’s qualifying. He failed to improve his best lap, however, as his best time ended up slotting him back to 15th.
“Qualifying was going good, and then we missed the tire window on our second set,” he explained. “Unfortunately, the track evolution was so high so we didn’t get any good lap time on the second set of tires. It wasn’t the setup, we just missed the window of the tires.”
Gridded 15th for Saturday evening’s Sprint Race, Crawford went to the outside and quickly gained four positions in the opening turns.
“It was a good start – I found good gaps and had good pace, and was able to gain positions.” he said.
From there, he maintained steady pressure, taking 10th with 11 laps remaining. Two late cautions resulted in a two-lap sprint to the checkered flag, with Crawford taking eighth on the final lap to move into the points.
“I had a pretty good race, keeping it clean and not making any mistakes,” he said. “It was good to be gaining some places.”
For Sunday’s Feature Race, though, Crawford found himself boxed in at the start, dropping him to 16th to set the stage for a tough battle for the remainder of the 32-lap event, which was not helped by the rapid safety car restart.
“It was not a great start, and it just tricked me on the first lap from finding a good place for my car,” he said. “Then I had a slow pit stop. It felt like everything that could have gone wrong, did go wrong, and that was it. I felt like we were quite fast, but with a slow pit stop, and then traffic. I was also very unlucky with the safety car, as well, because I lost 20 seconds during that. It was unfortunate, because we lost time because other people were going slowly.”
The F2 campaign comes to a close this weekend at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi, with Crawford set for double duty, racing in Formula 2 in addition to returning for a Free Practice 1 outing for the Aston Martin Aramco Formula 1 team.
“I’m looking forward to the weekend,” Crawford said. “Racing in F2, I’ll be trying to get vice champion. I’ll also be doing FP1 in F1, which will be quite good, and I’m really looking forward to that.”
This will be Crawford’s second practice session in Formula 1, driving for Aston Martin as he anticipates his expanded role for Aston Martin Aramco as both the team’s test and third driver for the entire 2026 F1 campaign.
