Jak Crawford reigned supreme in an action-packed F2 feature race at Silverstone on a wet track to cut Richard Verschoor’s championship lead to six points. The DAMS driver faced little threat from Alex Dunne in second place throughout, while Luke Browning put in an exceptional display to finish third at his home event.

By Martin Lloyd

Concerns over the weather conditions loomed in the build-up to the race. A heavy downpour prematurely ended the F3 feature race at 10:23, and the start time of the F2 formation lap was delayed from 11:05 to 11:15 in response. The rain continued until approximately 10:45, when clear blue skies appeared between the dissipating clouds.

Despite the damp conditions, race control deemed the track dry enough for a standing start. Victor Martins was on pole after qualifying fastest for the first time this season, with Dunne alongside him. 

The Frenchman got a sluggish start and immediately lost places to Dunne, Crawford and Roman Staněk. He quickly repassed the Czech driver, but it was another missed opportunity for him to lead. 

A period of calm then commenced at the front, with the gap between race leader Crawford and Dunne remaining stable for the next 20 laps at between one and three seconds. Behind, however, the race was anything but calm.

Browning had started well, rising to ninth by the end of the first lap from his grid position of 12th. He then scythed through the top 10, dispatching of Arvid Lindblad at Vale on lap two, Verschoor at Copse on lap four and Sebastián Montoya at The Loop on lap five. Browning’s Hitech teammate Dino Beganovic was following his teammate through with every move, and by the end of lap five the pair were up to sixth and seventh respectively. 

Browning’s next target was Joshua Dürksen. He spent the next five laps hounding the Paraguayan driver and forcing him to defend. The pair were both quicker than Invicta’s Staněk, and Dürksen passed the Czech driver on the inside of Copse on lap nine. In allowing Dürksen room to overtake, Staněk ran wide and opened the door for Browning to pass too heading into Maggots. Beganovic followed him through into Vale.

Having tried to overtake Dürksen at The Loop, Copse, Stowe and Club on lap 11, Browning then finally got past at Luffield on lap 12 when the Paraguayan ran wide. Third-placed Martins, with whom Browning clashed in the sprint race, was 3.7s ahead at the time of the overtake, but the Briton made that gap 2.4s just one lap later. 

After four more laps of chasing, Browning again made his way through at Luffield, this time around the outside, for third place on lap 18. The Hitech driver’s gap to Dunne in second stood at 6.7 seconds with 11 laps to go.

There remained the question of when to pit, however, as each driver still needed to complete their mandatory stop despite the wet conditions. Arvid Lindblad and Kush Maini were the first to take the plunge on lap 20, both pitting for fresh wet tyres. Browning and Staněk made the same decision, pitting on lap 22.

But with the track drying, some drivers were tempted to choose slicks as a ploy to enter the points-paying positions. One of those was Gabriele Minì, who fitted soft tyres on lap 21, just as Oliver Goethe behind pitted for wets. 

The pair exited the pits nose to tail, and Goethe had much more grip and attempted to overtake Minì into Village. But the Italian had little traction under braking and slid into the side of Goethe’s MP car, taking damage to the left-hand side of his car. Minì pulled over in the middle sector, triggering a virtual safety car period.

The leaders still needed to make their mandatory stops, and Crawford pitted at the end of lap 23, just before the intervention. He emerged in fifth place, with the top four – Dunne, Martins, Beganovic and Dürksen – yet to stop. 

Dunne was five seconds in front of Martins when the virtual safety car came out, but he had Rodin Motorsport teammate Amaury Cordeel ahead of him on track on the verge of being lapped. The Belgian was struggling to stay on the track on his slick tyres and was going slower than the delta time, meaning that Dunne could not go faster and Martins was quickly catching them. 

Dunne’s frustration over being unable to pass his teammate was tempered by the deployment of the full safety car after Staněk stopped on the Hangar Straight. The top four chose to pit, and Crawford retook the lead as a result. He led Dunne, Browning, Beganovic and Dürksen away for the restart at the end of lap 27 of 29 and quickly created a gap out front. 

There was drama behind as Dürksen spun out of fifth place and could not keep his engine running. Another safety car was inevitable given that his car was stationary on the pit straight, but race control allowed drivers to complete the first sector before deploying it. 

Crawford’s win was thus all but assured, and he led the field over the line when the safety car peeled into the pits at the end of the final lap. Dunne rounded out another solid weekend with second place, while Browning put in one of the drives of the season to take third. Beganovic was fourth ahead of Montoya in fifth.

Martins had entered the first safety car restart in sixth place, but he had sustained significant front wing damage during the safety car period and was much slower than all of those behind. This created a frenzied scramble for the minor points placings as drivers fought to overtake one another as well as Martins’ slower ART.

Sprint race winner Leonardo Fornaroli emerged in sixth ahead of Verschoor in seventh, while Campos teammates Lindblad and Pepe Martí secured eighth and ninth. Rafael Villagómez picked up the final point for Van Amersfoort in 10th place. Martins did not complete the final lap, and he was classified 19th.

Verschoor left the round with the championship lead intact, though Crawford’s third victory of 2025 put him only six points off the Dutchman. Dunne has dropped to third but also gained ground on Verschoor, sitting 14 points behind. Fornaroli is fourth and Browning fifth, 18 and 24 points behind respectively.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency