Aston Martin junior Jak Crawford topped a tight Formula 2 qualifying session in Jeddah on Friday as Victor Martins and Leonardo Fornaroli set times within a tenth of a second of his. The trio spoke to Feeder Series and other selected media at the post-qualifying press conference about how the session unfolded.

By Calla Kra-Caskey

For Crawford, pole position injects crucial momentum to an F2 season that got off to a difficult start. After qualifying third in Australia, the DAMS driver experienced a technical issue during the sprint race that forced his retirement, and a poor pit stop during what he called an ‘outlier’ round in Bahrain scuttled his opportunity to take points. Provided he starts this weekend’s feature race without taking a grid penalty, the two pole position points will be the first he has scored all year.

Despite eventually setting a pole position time of a 1:43.579, Crawford was in the middle of the pack for most of the session. After the first runs, in which drivers were able to improve on their second and third laps on the same set of supersoft tyres, Crawford sat 14th. 

Rookie Arvid Lindblad dominated the first half of qualifying and could have improved even further had he not bailed out of his third push lap. Martins was just 0.073 seconds behind him in second, with Alex Dunne and Richard Verschoor completing the provisional first two rows. Like Lindblad, Fornaroli bailed out of a quicker third lap, and he finished the first run in sixth behind Invicta teammate Roman Staněk. 

As the second run began, Gabriele Minì set the fastest lap before being pipped to provisional pole by Luke Browning with a 1:43.737, half a second faster than Lindblad’s previous best. Oliver Goethe and Dino Beganovic slotted into the second row and ended up as the only other drivers able to set laps before John Bennett hit the wall at Turn 17, causing a red flag.

The session restarted with just over five minutes to go. On his first flying lap, Fornaroli went to the top on a 1:43.671, good enough for provisional pole, before Martins beat him by seven hundredths. The pair were then bested by Crawford, who leapt from 18th to first. No other drivers within the top 10 improved their positions after that. 

Crawford credited his performance to changes the team made to the car mid-qualifying and to staying calm after the red flag. 

“We were dead last in the pit lane, so once everyone went at the green it was a massive queue. I just told my engineer it’s fine to be last,” Crawford said. “We had to risk it all because we needed the good preparation to the lap and that’s exactly what I got. I got a bunch of clean space and it was exactly what I needed.” 

Martins, who has set the second fastest time in every qualifying session this year, also made changes during the session. While he said that ‘the car was not perfect,’ he also admitted there wasn’t much more he could’ve done. 

“Today we [needed] Jak to not be there. We had to remove one driver to get pole,” he told Feeder Series. 

Still, he believes his first on-track pole position of 2025 will come soon. 

“It’s just about time. You just need sometimes to accept [that] things sometimes are not clicking together,” he said. “I just don’t need to do anything more or less. Maybe I can improve a bit for sure, I always have things to improve. I’m not perfect, and I know ART is there to push myself and help me on this subject. 

“We are always there. It will come.” 

Martins has also struggled at race starts so far this year, losing positions in each of the three races. The Frenchman will look to turn his qualifying consistency into strong results in the feature race. 

“There are things to improve for sure for the weekend, for tomorrow’s race. But definitely we learn a lot. We know where is the sweet spot of the car,” he said. “We have the best consistency with the performance in qualifying regarding myself and the team, and I think that we need to use that as an advantage and as a confidence [booster] for the next events.” 

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency