Australia’s Christian Mansell has topped his second qualifying session of the weekend to claim pole for Race 3 of the Castrol Toyota Formula Regional Oceania Championship in Taupo.
Giles Motorsport’s star recruit put in a 1:23.540 through the mid-stages to finish 0.349 seconds ahead of the field.
Southland’s Alex Crosbie put in a superb final lap to jump to the front row, pipping compatriot Liam Sceats by just 0.015 seconds and relegating him to the second row.
Crosbie will start both of Sunday’s races at the front, taking the pole after finishing eighth in the opener, with Race 2’s grid a reverse top eight from Saturday’s sole race results.
Sceats will start Race 3 from third, next to Saturday’s runaway winner, Roman Bilinski.
Kaleb Ngatoa lines up fifth, next to Gerrard Xie, with Patrick Woods-Toth and Michael Shin starting seventh and eighth, respectively.
Kaden Probst will start from 12th in the 17-strong field.
A tight qualifying session saw the field separated by just 2 seconds, with positions 2 through 14 having less than a second between them.
Woods-Toth faced qualifying issues for the second consecutive day, with the Canadian driver’s car stopping on track just minutes into the session and bringing out a red flag.
As was the case on Saturday, Woods-Toth could return to pit lane under his own power.
Mansell and Sceats had set the early pace and continued to improve their times once proceedings resumed, with the Australian’s 1:23.540 leading the way with five minutes remaining in the session.
Bilinski joined the party shortly after, jumping to third, behind Sceats and ahead of Ngatoa.
Woods-Toth finally got the chance to show his genuine pace and jumped to fifth with his first flying lap of the weekend, going just 0.022 seconds faster than Crosbie.
Xie put in a quick final lap to jump ahead of the duo, only for the Kiwi to respond with a blinding final flyer to jump to the front row.
Race 2 begins at 12.30 pm before the finale kicks off at 4.04 pm. Sky Sport has live coverage of the whole day of action from the New Zealand Historic GP.
CTFROC Race 3 qualifying results
| Pole | Christian Mansell | 1:23.540 |
| 2nd | Alex Crosbie | +0.349 |
| 3rd | Liam Sceats | +0.364 |
| 4th | Roman Bilinski | +0.455 |
| 5th | Kaleb Ngatoa | +0.492 |
| 6th | Gerrard Xie | +0.511 |
| 7th | Patrick Woods Toth | +0.606 |
| 8th | Michael Shin | +0.629 |
| 9th | Elliott Cleary | +0.815 |
| 10th | Nicola Lacorte | +0.827 |
| 11th | Tommy Smith | +0.835 |
| 12th | Kaden Probst | +1.280 |
| 13th | Titus Sherlock | +1.284 |
| 14th | Jett Bowling | +1.348 |
| 15th | Lucas Fecury | +1.580 |
| 16th | Landan Matriano Lim | +1.807 |
| 17th | Jake Bonilla | +2.061 |
Header Image: Toyota Gazoo Racing (Bruce Jenkins)
