Finishing in second, Jak Crawford started the race on pole, scoring his first points of the season: 20 in total for the pole position in qualifying and podium in the feature race. In the post-race interview, he spoke on the track, the strategies used and his overall thoughts on his drive.
“It’s always going to be a close race, especially at this track,” he stated, speaking up about the how “prime option strategy is almost the preferred on if there’s no safety cars” – like for today’s race.
He felt that he “lost the win” after falling behind Martins, where they “fell a little bit”.
However, Crawford was still proud of his perseverance during the race: “I drove basically 20 qualifying laps in a row and left nothing on the table. From my side, I’m happy.”
When asked at what point he felt Verschoor was a threat, he responded “quite early”, after passing Martins and trying to “build a gap with DRS”. Trying to save his tires, he admitted to dropping the pace, not long before his team told him on radio that the Dutchman was going quicker, “so at that moment was flat out, didn’t lift off a single bit.”
Overall, he thought that he “wouldn’t change anything to be honest”, happy with kick-starting his championship campaign with a strong race weekend.
The DAMS Lucas Oil team have “a lot of momentum to take into this short break before we go into a triple header”, and this race helped them gain “great confidence”, especially after Bahrain.
Image: FML
