Fresh tyres and a clear road ahead gave Kiwi Zack Scoular his second win of the 2026 Castrol Toyota Formula Regional Oceania Trophy at Taupo.
Using fresher tyres may compromise Scoular’s speed for the feature race later in the day, but victory was his, and by a big margin of 8.4 seconds over Freddie Slater, with mtec Motorsport teammate Ryan Wood nabbing another podium in third. It was the biggest margin of victory in the Trophy so far this season.
“I was able to control the race from start to finish,” said Zack.
“That was good after I made a few mistakes yesterday, so it’s awesome to win and another good result for the team.”
Conditions had changed again at the Taupo Motorsport Park for the third race. The morning’s rain and wet track were gone and replaced by dry, but cold and windy conditions.
The grid for the third race each weekend is defined by the combined driver’s fastest time from race 1 and race 2. Out of contention for a win yesterday, Scoular and his mtec Motorsport team opted for a tyre change during the race and clocked a blistering 1 minute 23.095 towards the end to secure pole position for today’s race.
M2 Competition driver Slater lined up alongside, with Saturday race winners Wood and James Wharton on row two.
Lights out, and it was Scoular who just managed to get to turn one ahead with Slater and Wood slotting into second and third as Saturday’s other winner, James Wharton, got locked out of a challenge for the lead after a great start. McLaughlin lost a couple of places as the lap progressed.
Scoular and Slater –on fresher tyres – made an early getaway and were over two seconds ahead of Wood at the end of lap one, with Wharton, Sharp, Ugo Ugochukwu, Ernesto Rivera, Jin Nakamura, Kanato Le and Yevan David in hot pursuit.
The field stretched out quickly over the opening five laps with plenty of jockeying for position a little behind the leaders in the top ten group, which Sharp assumed the lead of on lap four ahead of Wharton, Rivera, who had a big lock-up also on lap four, Le, a racy looking David and the rest.
Lap five and it was all on with Rivera and Le making decent contact at Turn 1, getting away with it, but causing some major congestion in their group with some thrilling side-by-side stuff throughout the fifth lap for the fans to enjoy.
A charging Seb Manson had battled his way into the main battle pack by lap seven and was challenging David for eighth when he was tagged from behind by a recovering McLaughlin. All managed to continue, but Seb had lost plenty of time.
A long way down the order, Ugochukwu, the series leader, was having a nightmare start to the race down in 16th – his comfortable early series lead under threat. Manson’s moment elevated him up to 15th, and a pass got him to 14th behind Jack Taylor, which became 13th when Taylor went off on the grass at the Turn 11 sweeper.
By the lap nine and halfway, Scoular retained a two-second lead on Slater, who had Wood closing him down less than a second behind. Sharp was a further four seconds in arrears before a lonely Wharton, then a gap to the busy midfield battle pack.
There was a bit of chaos at the end of lap 12 when David went straight on at the final chicane after out-braking himself. It was all on for those around as they tried to make a gain out of the mess in the battle for the lower top ten places.
Red Bull Juniors Rivera and McLaughlin emerged in convoy to start lap 14 ahead of Le and Cui, with David down to 11th and Ugochukwu continuing his smooth recovery drive in 12th.
McLaughlin came under massive attack from his challengers on lap 17, and it gave the fans a moment reminiscent of Mika Häkkinen’s great move on Michael Schumacher at Spa all those years ago, when first Jin Nakamura and then Cui went around either side of the Irishman using their push-to-pass system.
It was one of the most exciting heart-in-the-mouth moments so far for what is proving to be a very exciting championship. Thankfully, everyone made it into and out of the final chicane intact, with Nakamura ahead. Sadly, it all came to nothing a few corners later for Cui, who had to slow dramatically with damage to his front suspension from earlier contact.
Scoular, meanwhile, sailed serenely to yet another win and victory secured on a smart strategy in Saturday’s second race. Slater had no answer to his speed but was happy enough with second, Wood was third. Louis Sharp made it three in the top four for mtec, Wharton was a lonely fifth, a long way ahead of Nakamura, McLaughlin, Le, David and Rivera.
Points leader Ugochukwu’s challenging Sunday continued, his 13th-place finish his worst of the championship so far, and his series lead was cut to 28 points. He has his work cut out in the afternoon’s feature race too, starting 11th on the grid.
All of the weekend’s action is livestreamed on TGRNZ’s YouTube channel, and all races will be live on Sky Sport NZ. Races and qualifying sessions can be viewed on TGRNZ’s YouTube channel after the weekend.
Header Image: Joel Hanks
