Australian James Wharton took victory in race two at Taupo International Motorsport Park with a well-judged and comfortable debut win in the 2026 Castrol Toyota Formula Regional Oceania Trophy.
Wharton made a fast start from the second row, worked his way to the front with a pass on Hitech’s Kanato Le, then simply drove away from the field.
Second-place finisher Ernesto Rivera drove exceptionally well to hold off the silky-smooth speed of Ugo Ugochukwu, who further extended his series lead with another excellent result in third – his fifth podium of the season so far.
But the circuit’s second race of the day was all about the Australian’s first win, and the first win for the new team, TJ Speed with HMD Motorsports.
“We have a good car and it feels very good to get our first win,” said James afterwards. “It’s been a tough couple of weeks so far, but we are finally where we should be, I think. We have work to do, though, and we’ll focus on tomorrow now and try to make sure we are fast again.”
The grid featured a reverse of the top eight finishers from the earlier Race 1, and that put Wood down in eighth, series leader Ugochukwu seventh and up front, Hitech’s Kanato Le on pole position and Red Bull Junior Rivera alongside on the front row in his M2 Competition car.
Le made an excellent start to lead easily after the first two corners, but it was Wharton who fought his way through to second ahead of Rivera and second row starter Zack Scoular. Zack, however, was quickly pushed down to fourth by a fast-starting Louis Sharp.
Ugochukwu had made good progress early on, too, up to fifth by the second lap and holding off Jin Nakamura, Freddie Slater and Race 1 winner Ryan Wood.
Scoular’s race got even worse over the course of the next few laps as he fell back to tenth by lap 4. Any chance of a decent result was gone for the Kiwi, who had shown plenty of pace during the day. Wood too fell back in the early stages like his mtec Motorsport and dropped behind the other mtec driver, Yuanpu Cui, on lap five.
Up front, Wharton looked menacing behind Le and was using his early push-to-pass boosts nicely, though obviously well aware that the race only allowed six pushes of the system. Rivera was close by, still in third, and Sharp was just a car length or so behind the Mexican as the top seven quickly bunched up by the start of lap seven.
That seemed to be indicative of a drop-off in pace by the leader, and sure enough, later on the seventh lap, Wharton made a clean pass down the back straight to take the lead.
Rivera was next to challenge Le, but also had to contend with Ugochukwu, who was patiently making his way through the leading pack and was in fourth by the halfway mark. Ernesto made it through on lap ten – and there was a close shave in the pack on that lap too as Slater and Nakamura had a wild ride over the final chicane.
Wharton had his foot firmly planted to the floor while all this was going on, and with five to go had built a healthy lead of three and a half seconds.
The battle of the second half was unquestionably that of Rivera and Ugochukwu, who went wheel-to-wheel for several laps.
There was plenty going on in the group behind, however. Struggling with tyre degradation on the most abrasive circuit on the CTFROT calendar, Le made a big mistake on lap 15 in the final chicane, which put him well off-line and locked up, allowing Sharp, Slater and a recovering Wood all through.
The battles continued behind Wharton all the way to the flag at the end of eighteen laps, but Rivera held on for second, Ugochukwu grabbed his second podium of the day in third, Sharp was fourth just half a second ahead of Wood, while Slater dropped back in the last couple of laps to come home sixth on the road before his penalty.
Cui finished seventh ahead of a disappointed Le, with Ricardo Baptista nabbing his best result so far in ninth and two-time world rally champion Kalle Rovanperä also having his best result in the Trophy so far with a solid run to tenth.
All the weekend’s action will be livestreamed on TGRNZ’s YouTube channel, and all races will be live on Sky Sport NZ. Tickets to come along to the race weekend are still available at https://nextgennz.flicket.co.nz
Header Image: Joel Hanks
