Photo: DAMS
Jak Crawford’s pitstop timing won him Formula 2’s Monaco feature race, and it was a very intense experience when he looked to pit.
The race’s 42-lap distance was shortened after a lengthy red flag stoppage on lap one, but running both tyre compounds remained compulsory and when Dino Beganovic crashed on lap 14 it opened the pit window.
Race control responded to the crash with a virtual safety car, then a safety car period and later race-ending red flags. Crawford pitted before doing a lap behind the safety car, retaining fourth thanks to the gaps maintained during the VSC spell and then taking the lead when the top three pitted a lap later.
“When we were still green, I’d seen the crash on TV. And I was entering the last sector, so in turn 18 right before the pit entry I’d slow down like two or three seconds to see if I could go in before the safety car, or VSC. I was thinking it was going to be a safety car,” he explained to media including Formula Scout.
“And then it didn’t go, so I just kept going. And literally as I just passed they put VSC. Then I did the same thing the next lap. I saw the crash, I was like ‘oh, this could be a safety car’. I told the team on the radio ‘be ready, be ready, in case the safety car, I’m just going to pull in’. And I did the exact same thing. Slowed down right before the pit entry, and I saw safety car flashing on the board.
“I pulled right, right in, and barely made it into the pits. And oh my gosh, it was the craziest two laps ever.”
The DAMS driver reiterated it being the “craziest feeling ever”, gushing about “the adrenaline I had when I turned hard right for the pitlane and knew the others weren’t in”.
“I had no idea if they were [bunched] behind the safety car or not. So it was basically zero on my delta trying to [be at maximum safety car pace], just in case they weren’t and I had to race them out of the pitlane. And then once I knew I was ahead, I was just trying to think about the restart because it wasn’t over yet.
“Even when we got in the pitlane [when the race stopped], I was so confused. I didn’t want to speak too soon. Once I found out in the pitlane that it wasn’t going to be resumed, I couldn’t believe it.”
Crawford told Formula Scout “the strategy changed a lot” when the race distance was reduced.
“I guess we all had the same idea to be super close to each other and try to make something happen in the pitstop phase near the end of the race. We had a huge gap behind as well. So I could play with that to try to jump some positions. Because I definitely wasn’t going to lose any.”
Additional reporting by Alejandro Alonso Lopez