DAMS Lucas Oil 2025 Season Preview: Experience leading the way

While Jak Crawford has re-signed with DAMS Lucas Oil for 2025, the American will be joined by a new teammate in Kush Maini for the upcoming campaign.

The French team finished last year’s Championship in sixth place in the Teams’ Standings, a drop of two places versus 2023. The goal for 2025 then is clear, as they aim to rebound from an up and down campaign and return to their front-running ways.

Crawford was almost ever-present in the top five of the Drivers’ Standings throughout the season, but the Aston Martin Development Driver wasn’t quite close enough to the top to fight for the title.

After a year to learn the current generation of F2 car, DAMS now have a foundation and understanding of where they are with performance levels and where their rivals might be stronger and weaker. Now it’s time to push on and put those lessons into practice.

2025 will mark Crawford’s third in the F2 Championship and he has gone from strength to strength since joining back in 2023. His rookie campaign brought a maiden victory, and he gained confidence as the year wore on. Switching to DAMS for his follow-up season, Crawford added another victory and multiple podiums to his F2 CV, and now looks poised to contend for top honours in 2025.

Crawford earned multiple Feature Race podiums, a clear area of improvement from his rookie season. The American missed points on Sunday five times across the full season, the same number as title contenders Isack Hadjar and Paul Aron, and only behind eventual Champion Gabriel Bortoleto.

That total was down from seven in 2023, so if he can continue that trend in 2025 and secure even more Feature Race points-scoring results, he is well set to make an even bigger impact this time around.

Across the garage, new teammate Kush Maini arrives after a season that included some career-high moments along with a few lows also. No driver ever experiences a year that goes entirely according to plan but the Indian driver enjoyed landmark moments including a maiden F2 Pole and race victory.

With those milestone moments out of the way, he will now be looking to push on to the next level and pick up a few more of those across the 2025 season. After finishing P13 in the Standings last year, the high points will need to become more frequent this time around, something he is more than capable of making happen.

Like Crawford, the number of podiums in his second F2 campaign increased, with five visits to the rostrum last year. Maini has been a points scorer at every venue on the F2 calendar across his two seasons in the Championship minus Lusail, newly added last year. With his experience levels going into year three, he has all the elements he needs to help DAMS press on in their fight up the order once again.

The duo completed post-season testing at Yas Marina, with Crawford going fastest of all on Day 1 and that was despite a quicker lap being deleted.

Maini was able to adapt quickly to his new team, all but matching the American on the first day of running before going quicker on Day 2, the pair hardly separated on the timing screens.

The team’s race pace was a big strength across the 2024 season, most pronounced in Barcelona where Crawford and former teammate Juan Manuel Correa finished first and third respectively - the team’s strongest showing across the campaign.

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Able to eke the best out of the Pirelli tyres, DAMS were often able to move forward in the races across all of last season, however, that was often a necessity rather than a bonus.

The team’s Qualifying pace was more of a weakness, and a clear target to make improvements upon for the 2025 campaign. One lap speed could unlock a lot of potential the team proved it had throughout the previous campaign.

It was an area of focus during the post-season test, but time will tell whether they’ve taken a marked step forward in this area versus their rivals.