‘Luck like this is crazy’ - Crawford stunned by Monaco win

Jak Crawford admits his Formula 2 feature race victory in Monaco was down to some “crazy” luck as he moved just 14 points away from the championship lead.

The American was running in fourth place in a race shortened by a first-lap crash that took out the three of the top four cars, when another crash led to a Virtual Safety Car (VSC). F2 rules state drivers can’t make their mandatory pit stop during VSC periods, but the full safety car was called just before Crawford reached pit entry, allowing him to make his stop and jump the top three to lead, before the race was red flagged and ended early.

“Wow, crazy,” Crawford told SiriusXM. “I can't believe it. I mean, waking up, starting 7th, I thought maybe I could get a P3, a P4 with a good strategy, but the luck like this is crazy.

“I've been quite unlucky at the start of the year, and to get this back, it feels like I've been repaid a bit. Wow, it was a crazy race, and a crazy even two laps trying to decide what to do under safety car. I slowed up on the pit entry just in case of the opportunity to make it into pit lane, and it was just perfect timing.

“When it was still green, I was watching the screens and saw that there was a yellow on the screen, and I had already slowed down three or four seconds right before that just in case there was going to be a safety car, and it didn't come out, so I just kept going.

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“I sped back up, and then Virtual Safety Car. I was like, ‘Oh, I could have gone in the pits’, and then was driving around zero on my delta, and then I saw the crash and thought ‘This could be a safety car’, and I was saying to the team, ‘Be ready, be ready, just in case it's safety car last minute’, and that’s exactly what happened, same thing.

“I slowed down a lot right before the pit entry, and I saw safety car on the board, I took a hard right and barely made it in, so it was perfect timing.”

Crawford expressed his sympathy towards previous race leader Leonardo Fornaroli who had a first single seater victory in over 100 races taken away by the safety car and red flag. But the 20-year-old Aston Martin F1 reserve is taking the positives as he moved fifth in the F2 standings, 14 points off the lead with his entire total coming across the past five races.

“I had zero points going into the feature race in Jeddah, which is race five of the year. And I was already far out from the lead.

“In this championship, anything can happen. We said at the beginning of the year, just keep scoring consistently, average around 15, 20 points each weekend. And eventually stuff will happen to other people and you'll catch up.

“And that's exactly what happened. I scored 20 points in Jeddah. I scored 18 points last weekend. I scored, I guess, 19 points this weekend. So, just keep going on that. Of course, we need some big results every now and then where we score 30-point weekends and stuff. But it's great to finally feel like I've caught up.”