Unpacking the ‘craziest race’ that was Crawford’s 2025 Monaco F2 feature victory

Dunne led the field away from pole position but had a worse start than Martins. As they entered Turn 1, Dunne attempted an ambitious move to the inside to regain the position, but Martins squeezed Dunne to the inside of the apex and they ran out of room - with Dunne’s car smashing Martins's car into the barriers.

What followed was a pile-up crash that removed five more cars from the running.

What happened during the red flag stoppage - the FIA’s explanation

The red flag at Monaco brought up a quirk in the F2 rules, as numerous drivers had to stop behind the pileup crash with no route ahead - but not all of them could take the restart.

In the event of such an incident, F2 drivers must keep their engines running and not have them restarted with external assistance.

As with most high-performance racing engines, these units overheat when stationary for a long time. The likes of Prema’s Gabriele Mini and ART Grand Prix’s Ritomo Miyata had to turn their engines off due to overheating, yet those two drivers hadn’t picked up considerable damage from the crash.

Mini and Miyata held station while waiting for recovery back to the pitlane during the red flag, but no recovery was offered and they were unable to restart the race.

The FIA later reasoned to Raceteq that those two cars were not recovered due to time constraints.

In the cases of Rodin Motorsport’s Amaury Cordeel and Trident’s Sami Meguetounif, their cars were recovered by crane and truck to the pitlane to be repaired and restarted.

Damaged cars can be repaired during red flags and changes can also be made for assemblies containing the damaged parts, wheels, tyres, driver comfort, brakes, and radiator ducts. Tyre changes under red flag conditions do not, however, count as the driver’s mandatory pitstop.

For the following rolling restart, the field was set back to the original grid order, which put Invicta Racing’s Leonardo Fornaroli in the lead ahead of Prema’s Sebastian Montoya and Campos Racing’s Arvid Lindblad, as seven drivers had retired.

This was a turn of fortune for Montoya in particular, as he had stalled on the formation lap, as he did in the Imola feature race, and started the race from the pitlane. The Colombian was able to avoid the opening-lap crash and was promoted back up to second for the restart.

How Crawford took an unlikely victory in Monaco

Overtaking in Monaco is notoriously difficult due to its tight confines; in the previous day’s F2 sprint race at Monaco, won by DAMS’s Kush Maini, there were three separate penalties handed out for manoeuvres that ended up in contact.

Therefore, Fornaroli was expected to win Sunday’s feature race once he was in a leading position - but his chances were spurned after Dino Beganovic crashed at Casino corner.

With most of the field left to pit, the virtual safety car (VSC), during which nobody can take their mandatory pitstop, was deployed. That then turned into a safety car - an opportune moment to pit.

Fornaroli, Montoya and Lindblad had passed the pitlane when the safety car was deployed - and had to make another lap before taking a favourable opportunity to pit. They were left incredulous by the timing.

DAMS driver Crawford was the first of the cars to pit after the safety car was deployed, although he nearly missed the pit entry and had to turn sharply in to make it. He later revealed that he had slowed down considerably during the VSC to open up a possible pitstop in case of the safety car.

As Fornaroli, Montoya and Lindblad were now slowed down behind the safety car, Crawford managed to catch up, and ended up in the lead when the three leaders pitted on the next lap.

The damage from Beganovic’s crash to the barriers was severe enough to need repairs and, with such a tight schedule on Sunday at Monaco, the race had to be red-flagged and stopped - with Crawford the victor over Fornaroli.

Lindblad would have finished third but received a five-second time penalty for pitlane speeding, which gave Montoya a rather fortunate maiden F2 podium.

By virtue of finishing fourth ahead of Lindblad, Browning took the championship lead exiting Monaco.