Red Bull junior Crawford to shadow Red Bull Racing in Miami

Jak Crawford will attend the first Miami Grand Prix next weekend (7/8 May) as a guest of Oracle Red Bull Racing, his first race weekend in this more relaxed role.

The American Red Bull junior driver finished 13th in the FIA Formula 3 Championship with Hitech GP in 2021, and sits fourth in the standings after six races so far this year, taking two podiums at Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari with Prema Racing last time out.

Third and second at the team’s home circuit brought him within four points of Victor Martins and team-mate Arthur Leclerc at the top of the Drivers’ Championship.

He finished marginally behind Martins in the Sprint Race, having moved up from ninth on the partially-reversed grid, building on his third-place qualifying result to finish second in the Feature race after Oliver Bearman and Gregoire Saucy collided at Rivazza 1 on the final lap.

“I get to go to a lot of Formula One races, but never just as a spectator with no racing duties,” he said.

“It will definitely be a cool experience. Red Bull Racing invited me to attend while I was in Imola. I will be in the UK then have to fly to Miami then back to my team in Italy. I like to stay busy, so this is good.”

“I get to hang out in the box to watch the race, meet sponsors, do interviews, and learn some things you can only learn from watching on the inside.

“I am certainly not new to being with a race team, but this is on a whole different level.”

Crawford was pleased with his results in Imola which catapulted him up the order and into the early title reckoning.

“It was a good weekend, for sure. Conditions kept changing during the weekend with the wet weather. I had a good qualifying – I could have been on pole but caught a little traffic.

“I worked my way through the pack and kept my nose clean in the Sprint Race, and got a podium out of it.

“It was wet at the beginning of Sunday’s [Feature] race but we decided to go with slick tyres. I managed [them] well and I was really coming at the end of the race. I managed my tyres well all weekend, because I was very fast at the end of both races.

“It’s a huge confidence booster, coming from Bahrain where I was a bit unlucky with a mechanical problem in qualifying,” the 16-year-old said of a weekend which delivered 27th and seventh-place finishes.

“Now I’ve scored a lot of points and am only four points back from the lead, so it was a really positive weekend. I could easily be in the championship lead right now if not for the bad luck in Bahrain.”

He has a chance to atone for the disappointment of Bahrain’s Sprint Race as FIA F3 visits one of Crawford’s happiest hunting grounds, the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya (21/22 May)

The Championship visited the circuit for the second of two lots of midweek testing in Spain earlier in April, having run at the Circuito de Jerez the week before.

Crawford combined FIA F3 with a third-place Euroformula Open campaign last year, which brought eight wins and ten podiums; two of those wins came in Barcelona at the final round of the season.

Both his positive showing in Imola, and an experience of the way Red Bull Racing operate on race weekends from the inside, might bring enhanced focus for Crawford in Barcelona as he looks to continue his charge up the order.