Bright sunshine, a big crowd and plenty of action were among the highlights from the opening round of the 2025/26 NextGen NZ Championship.
The Waikato circuit was bathed in sunshine for much of the day before late cloud cover added some weather jeopardy to the GT World Challenge field, with rain threatening, but ultimately not falling.
A large crowd enjoyed the atmosphere at the circuit, which included a packed pit lane walk, autograph sessions and Monochrome GT4 Australia grid walk – with more of the same planned for tomorrow.
A GT World Challenge Australia thriller was the end-of-day highlight as current Supercars Championship leader Broc Feeney hauled down a more than 10-second lead to pass Josh Hunt’s Aston Martin with barely five minutes remaining in the one-hour race.
The win was critical for Feeney and co-driver Brad Schumacher, who closed the margin to championship leaders Jaxon Evans and Elliott Schutte – ensuring the title battle will go into the final race of the season on Sunday.
With Hunt and Liam Talbot second, local heroes Steve Brooks and Ryan Wood finished third, their fourth podium of the season in their Wolfbrook Racing Audi R8.
An action-packed Monochrome GT4 Australia race kicked off proceedings with a potentially championship-changing day, seeing George Miedecke and Rylan Gray claiming the outright and Silver class victory in their Ford Mustang GT4, in a day where class leaders Tom Hayman and Max Geoghegan struck dramas and limped home in 18th.
Miedecke and Gray were followed home by the Toyota Supra GT4 of young Kiwi Taylor Bryant and Jeromy Gray – the father of race winner, Rylan – who also claimed the Silver-Am class win.
Jarrod Hughes and Summer Rintole finished third outright in their Mercedes while a last-lap overtake in the penultimate corner saw Jacob Lawrence steal a class win in the Am class.
A brilliant start to the brand-new TA2 New Zealand Championship saw a mega three-way fight for the win between Clay Osborne (Mustang), Dylan Grant (Dodge) and Caleb Byers (Camaro) that went right down to the wire.
After several lead changes and side-by-side battles, Osborne narrowly claimed the inaugural victory in the category that sets the tone for the season to come.
The V8 category is several years in the making and has burst into life this weekend in style, with 16 cars on track and battles throughout the field.
The opening Bridgestone GR86 Championship race of the year was a thriller, Chris White claiming a narrow win over Arthur Broughan, with defending champion Hugo Allen in third, less than a second covering the top three at the line following a typical action-packed Toyota 86 affair.
The high-quality Toyota field earlier saw Broughan take pole position ahead of a grid where the top 11 cars were covered by just eight-tenths of a second.
Angus Fogg (Race 1) and Kayton Coughey (Race 2) split the wins in the pair of NAPA Central Muscle car races today, while Daniel Angus claimed opening honours in the second round of the Porsche NZ Championship, and entertaining battles throughout the big field were a highlight.
Joel Giddy opened his account in the GT New Zealand Championship in style with a dominating lights-to-flag win in his Mach1 Engineering Mercedes-AMG.
Giddy, who was runner-up last year, led defending champion Rick Armstrong home in today’s 30-minute race with Luke Manson a fighting third in his Porsche.
Round 1 of the NextGen NZ Championship continues today with action commencing at 8:30am at Hampton Downs, with tickets available online or at the gate.
Broadcast coverage commences at 8:45am NZDT on Sky Sport NZ, Fox Sports, Kayo or YouTube.
Header Image: Tayler Burke
