Alex Crosbie had mixed fortunes as he contested Round 2 of the 2025 Castrol Toyota Formula Regional Oceania Championship (CTFROC) at Hampton Downs Motorsport Park over the weekend.
Driving his Castrol Toyota FT-60, Crosbie showed good pace in Friday’s practice sessions, making improvements within himself and also to the car, becoming more confident in the car and able to push more. The pace was good, but the entire field was very close as he secured times good enough for twelfth, eighth and fifth across the three practice sessions.
Crosbie qualified 11th for Saturday’s opening race over 18 laps and made up a position off the start before settling into 10th. He set his fastest lap of the race on Lap 14. “It was a good race pace time,” he said.
Shortly after he caught a group of cars, one of which went off the road. “A bit of push and shove followed but I wasn’t quite lucky enough to pick up more spots from it.” He, however, did emerge in eighth and with the race nearing its end the action was frantic. “We were three-wide down the main straight but I left a bit too much room at Turn 1. One car got through, then I took too much kerb and lost another spot, which meant I finished tenth.”
In Sunday morning’s qualifying for the feature race of the round, the Dorothy Smith Memorial Cup race, Crosbie set a time four-tenths quicker than his previous day’s qualifying time. However, such was the pace it was only good for eleventh on the grid in a super close session with just .560 of a second between second on the grid and Crosbie in eleventh.
Race 2 of the weekend was next and Crosbie started tenth and in the early exchanges was battling for seventh, eighth and ninth positions. He eventually settled into tenth, staying on the train of cars ahead. The first ten cars were covered by just 10.242 seconds at the flag with Crosbie five seconds clear of Jett Bowling of the USA behind him. Unfortunately, after the race the car was found to be slightly underweight, bringing disqualification from the results.
In the Dorothy Smith Memorial Trophy race, Crosbie started eleventh and made ground through turn one and two only to drop a few spots after running wide. He settled into twelfth and ran there for the remainder of the race.
The championship now moves to Manfeild Circuit Chris Amon in Feilding next weekend. “I need to make improvements to our qualifying trim as it is so important to qualify high in this very close field,” says Crosbie.
