Red Bull junior Jak Crawford battled it out in Austria to secure a win in a chaotic Formula 3 sprint race – the American’s first race win in the series.
It has been a great weekend all round for the F3 Red Bull juniors with Isack Hadjar taking pole position in Friday’s qualifying. During the post-race press conference, Crawford spoke about having Helmut Marko (the head of Red Bull’s driver development programme) on the podium with him.
“It was pretty cool. Right after the race, he usually texts me to say congratulations and he said ‘This time, I don’t have to text you. I can do it in person.’ So it’s quite cool seeing him up there.”
Jak Crawford
The chaos started early at the red bull ring. Caio Collet kept the lead from Juan Manuel Correa going into turn 1 however by the end of the lap, Correa had taken the lead from the Brazilian. An incident at the back of the field brought out a safety car, Correa kept the lead at the restart however at lap 6, he coasted to a halt due to a mechanical failure handing the lead of the race back to Collet.
Lap 10 saw action in all directions as Crawford fought Colapinto and took P2 whilst Leclerc, Maloney and Bearman had a collision. The three drivers came together causing Zane Maloney to make contact with Oliver Bearman ending the Barbadian’s race. Bearman was investigated for this incident and received a 5-second time penalty – the penalty dropped the Brit from sixth to sixteenth.
Racing resumed on lap 14 where Crawford was immediately on the tail of race leader Caio Collet. The duo battled it out for the entire middle sector of the lap with the red bull junior ultimately coming out on top and taking the lead of the race. With just a couple of laps to go, the top four (Crawford, Collet, Colapinto and Leclerc), were separated by just over two seconds meaning they all had a DRS advantage, other than the leader. They were all so closely matched that they were unable to complete any last-minute moves and ultimately finished in that order.
Third place Franco Colapinto hadn’t reached the podium since his race win in Imola, and was relieved to be back up there.
“Of course, it’s always nice to be here again. I had a difficult couple of weekends but we are here on the podium, so I’m really happy about it. The team also did a good job this weekend.”
Franco Colapinto in the post-race press conference
How the championships stand
After fighting his way up to fourth place from ninth, PREMA’s Arthur Leclerc has closed the gap to current leader Victor Martins to just one point. Crawford’s race win has also allowed him to jump tomorrow’s pole-sitter Isack Hadjar, the pair are third and fourth respectively separated by a single point.
The teams’ championship has remained much the same with PREMA further extending their lead to 77 points ahead of nearest rival ART Grand Prix. Further down the standings a battle is ensuing between third and fourth placed Trident and Hitech who are currently separated by just 2 points.