Crawford was one of the standout performers across the first two weekends of the season with a trio of top-five finishes, including a second place in the first sprint race in Sakhir.
But since then, a series of issues in qualifying have seen the DAMS driver drop to 11th in the standings, having scored on just two further occasions across six outings.
“I hate to use this excuse, but we’ve been super-unlucky in the past three rounds,” Crawford told Autosport.
With the Spanish Grand Prix starting a hectic run of five events in six weeks – this making up over a third of the season – it is fortunate then that the American has been able to pinpoint where his problems lie and what needs to change to recover his form.
“Qualifying, as everyone knows, is so important and it hasn’t gone our way.
“I’ve had a mistake on my side in Melbourne where I crashed and, in Imola, I had an engine issue which limited my laps so again, qualified on the back row.
“Then Monaco is Monaco and traffic struck bad, and timing was a mess.
“In the end, we’ve had really good pace at all five rounds. We just need a clean session and we’ve proved in the races that, even starting at the back, we can score good points in the feature race.
“It’s all about having a clean qualifying and then we can really fight for the wins from there.”
Explaining the nature of the problems in qualifying, the Aston Martin junior took “full responsibility” for his Australia crash, but added: “Our team in general has struggled a bit with tyre warmup, so that’s the reason that caused me to crash in Melbourne. Imola was just a pure engine failure – there’s nothing that we could do about that one.
“In Monaco, it was just a mixture of red flags, traffic and a little bit of miscommunication that caused me to miss the chequered flag by about two seconds to get my final lap in.”
As part of his role, Crawford recently completed his first outing in F1 machinery as he got to grips with the AMR22 at the Red Bull Ring, completing nearly 300 miles across the day.
Asked if the experience lived up to his expectations, Crawford said: “100 percent. There is no doubt, I was a bit nervous beforehand. You get told a lot of things about how it is going to be, what it is going to be like and you have a picture in your head but you never really know until you get out there.
“The first thing I noticed was how much torque there is from the engine and then how much downforce and high-speed capability there is with the car. It’s quite eye-opening on the downforce side for sure, but actually, it’s the same principle of driving an F2 car or stuff like that. It’s all the same, just everything comes at you a lot quicker.”
It is likely that Aston Martin will use reserve driver Felipe Drugovich to complete its quota of FP1 sessions with a rookie driver, but Crawford is eager to show what he can do in an official session.
“Yeah, of course. I think I would jump at the opportunity if it ever came,” he said.
“I would take it with both hands. It’s an incredible opportunity and I think if you can prove yourself, like Ollie [Bearman] did in Jedah in an F1 car on the biggest stage, then you deserve to be there.
“It disregards some of his unfortunate results so far in F2. In the end, it’s very different F1 and F2.”
