Jak Crawford experienced a Formula 1 car for the first time at the Red Bull Ring before traveling to the Canadian Grand Prix, and is set for more outings later this season.
The American is part of the Aston Martin young driver development program, and after joining the team ahead of this season he drove a 2022 car in Austria on Wednesday. Completing over 400km of running across the day – more than a grand prix distance – Aston Martin saidthe 19-year-old adapted to the car quickly, and Crawford admits it was a special experience.
“It was amazing,” Crawford told RACER. “I mean, straight away, you can tell. It just feels a bit different, the steering. The first thing I noticed straight away was how I had so much downforce and so much front end – as soon as I turned the wheel it was darting everywhere. I described it to everyone as like turning up the sensitivity on your mouse very high. And that’s what it felt like.
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“But I had an amazing day. Obviously, the biggest things were the high speed and the brakes … just overall, the downforce. So, lots of things to get used to. Also a bit more complicated, with the wheel and everything. But in the end, I got used to it and had a lot of fun.”
Crawford immediately flew to Canada following the test, arriving in Montreal on Thursday to continue his learning at grand prix weekends, and despite a run of F2 races at seven of the next eight F1 weekends, he’s hopeful of more track time in the AMR22 later this year.
“The biggest goal was to get me comfortable in the car as soon as possible, get me a good amount of laps in, which we did,” he said. “And obviously, in Austria, you always worry about the weather. So we were trying to do everything quite quickly in the morning, focusing on just driving stuff, and more performance runs.
“Then we actually never got any rain, which was amazing. So I was able to do some longer runs in the afternoon and test the the tires and everything.
“I hope to be in the car again soon. I think we’ll definitely have some more opportunities later in the year. So hopefully they come soon. Obviously, we have a busy span of European races at the moment, so quite busy on the F2 side. I try to be in the sim as much as possible, but obviously it’s a very busy time now for a couple of months.”