No obvious favourite as testing concludes at FR Oceania Round 2

With Zack Scoular, Supercars champion Will Brown and Red Bull’s fast Brit Arvid Lindblad all topping a test session each in today’s final hit out before round two of the Castrol Toyota FR Oceania 2025 Championship at Hampton Downs – there’s no obvious favourite.

The first session of the morning brought much cooler – and much quicker – conditions for the drivers than Thursday and the lap times reflected that. The faster ones all ventured out for new tyre runs later on while an equal number opted to stay on older rubber and work on set up.

Taupo race winner Scoular gave further proof of his arrival under the international single seater spotlight with the fastest time of the session – an excellent 1 minute 28.736 seconds.  Nikita Johnson and Arvid Lindblad were only thousandths behind, however, with the top half of the 17 car field covered by just seven tenths of a second.

Josh Pierson – a pace setter in Thursday testing – was there again in fourth with Patrick Heuzenroeder in fifth and Brown amongst the pacesetters again in sixth in his Giles Motorsport car.

The morning session top ten was completed by Michael Shin for Korea, Peruvian Matias Zagazeta, Brazilian Nicholas Monteiro and US racer Shawn Rashid, doing exceptionally well in a challenging championship for a driver who didn’t start racing until his mid-twenties.

Brown had been hard at work after the first session looking at ways to improve his car and it paid off in the second session when the Giles Motorsport driver went top of the timesheets with a 1 minute 29.155 second lap in what were slower conditions.

Most of the drivers completed longer runs during the half hour session – Brown racking up over 15 laps with several drivers topping that.

Heuzenroeder was on the pace once again to record the second fastest time of the session – a step up relative to the other runners for him – while Scoular was there yet again in third. Heuzenroeder’s time made it an Australian 1-2 for the session.

Josh Pierson was fourth and after a quiet start to the championship, American Jett Bowling – a second timer in New Zealand’s premier single seater championship – clocked the fifth fastest time just four tenths off Brown.

Behind those five, Lindblad, Johnson, Alex Crosbie, Rashid and Nicolas Stati completed the top ten.  It was another exceptionally close session – pointing towards the real action at the weekend being equally close.  Just over a second covered the top 13 drivers.

Brown was strong in the final session of the day too. Lindblad put in a late lap for the top spot while Brown was only a couple of tenths behind in second. Heuzenroeder was there yet again in third place, with Pierson also proving he has consistent pace at the North Waikato track with fourth.

Kiwi Alex Crosbie had another strong session for Giles Motorsport, cementing improvements made to pace on Thursday and certainly putting him in the picture for a decent result over the weekend. Johnson, Manson, Shin and Monteiro rounded out the final places in the top ten.

Scoular did the most laps of the session at 18, and was clearly running longer race distances rather than going for lap times. He finished 14^th for the session.

Attention now turns fully to the action-end of the second round, with qualifying on Saturday morning and the first race on Saturday afternoon.

CTFROC Round 2 Practice 1

CTFROC Round 2 Practice 2

CTFROC Round 2 Practice 3

Header Image: Neville Bailey