Lindblad hammers down for dominant Denny Hulme Memorial Trophy race victory

Red Bull’s latest rising star – Britain’s Arvid Lindblad – showed why he is being tipped for F1 after a dominant drive in the feature race of the first round of the Castrol Toyota Formula Regional Oceania Championship this afternoon at Taupo.

One day shy of 51 years since Denny Hulme scored an unexpected victory in the Argentine Grand Prix and took home the trophy that is competed for every year at Taupo in the FR Oceania championship, the only Kiwi F1 world champion would surely have given a nod of approval to Lindblad’s dominant winning drive.

After race two winner Matias Zagazeta made a quicker getaway, M2 Competition’s pole sitter Lindblad kept his cool and repeated the move on his team mate he had tried around the outside of the leader at turn one at the start of Saturday’s race. This time, as the Taupo crowd held its breath, he made it stick and surged into a lead he would never lose.

He was quickly into his stride and a series of fast early laps gave him a lead over Zagazeta and the rest and it was enough to allow him to control the race. He never looked back and stormed away to a five second margin over his nearest rival at the chequered flag.

“I made my life difficult at the start, it’s not easy to start on the inside here as it is a bit dirtier and I didn’t do a great start,” he explained afterwards.

“I was very committed when I saw I had lost the lead that I had to get it back at turn one and I’m very happy that from there I was able to control the race.

“I could feel very quickly that the thermal degradation was a lot higher worse in this race than in the previous two, and the guys behind were very close but after four or five laps I managed to edge away.”

Peruvian Zagazeta was forced into defensive mode for the rest of the race after losing his bid for the lead. And in the early laps it was Saturday winner Zack Scoular in his mtec entry who led a six car chase for Matias’s second spot, a train which included Patrick Heuzenroeder, Josh Pierson and Supercars champion Will Brown.

Charging along for Giles Motorsport, Brown survived a scary moment early on after interlocking wheels with Michael Shin down the long back straight that sent the Korean into a wild high speed spin which he was very fortunate to survive and recover from with no contact of any sort. He resumed in tenth.

After that excitement, Brown set off after Josh Pierson and eventually caught him on lap 11 making a great pass in the final chicane in a four-wheel drift around the outside. That elevated him to  fifth and he immediately set after fellow Australian Heuzenroeder who was a few car lengths ahead, setting the fastest lap on the way.

He got close enough on lap 18 to have a go at his compatriot,  and found his way by on the tricky and tight left hand hairpin before the main straight. That moved him up to fourth and within a second of Scoular in third. With two laps to go he was on the Kiwi’s rear wing as Scoular tried to hold on with a car that was clearly struggling for grip. Brown attacked again on the final lap but simply ran out of time.

At the flag it was a dominant Lindblad from Zagazeta, with a relieved Scoular in third, a fighting fourth for Brown and Heuzenroeder fifth. Nikita Johnson didn’t have the pace of his earlier races and came home in sixth, just ahead of Pierson while Shin recovered from his spin to bring his car home eighth. Sebastian Manson bagged another top ten position with ninth and Shaw Rashid put in his best performance of the weekend to bring his car home tenth.

The championship now makes a quick dash to Hampton Downs for the second round next weekend. Testing begins on Thursday at the challenging North Waikato circuit.

CTFROC Round 1 Race 3 Results