Lindblad leaves it late for Denny Hulme Memorial Trophy pole

M2 Competition driver Arvid Lindblad put a frustrating first day behind him to secure pole position for the feature race – the Denny Hulme Memorial Trophy – at the first round of the Castrol Toyota Formula Regional Oceania Championship at Taupo this morning.

The Red Bull-backed rising star left it until late in the session before unleashing his best lap, and it was good enough to knock Peruvian team mate Matias Zagazeta off the top spot and push Saturday race winner Zack Scoular down to third on the grid in his mtec Motorsport entry.

After a first day when he wasn’t quite on the pace of the leaders, it was a big turnaround for the young Brit who has a season of Formula 2 to look forward to after his championship campaign in New Zealand.

“Overall I was a lot happier than yesterday and it definitely puts us in a really good position for today,” he said afterwards.

“I wasn’t super comfortable in the beginning on the first lap or two but I just then accepted that what happens underneath me is what I’ve got and I really tried to adapt and do what I could do.”

The first representative time of the session was a 1.23.843 by Will Brown in his Red Bull Giles Motorsport car, and that signalled a frantic period of about five minutes when the times tumbled.

Scoular, Brown, Nikita Johnson all popped up at the top of the timing before Zagazeta, growing in confidence with every session in his Toyota FT60 – stopped the clocks with a 1.23.128.

That looked odds-on for the pole position until Lindblad unleashed his final effort, and it was one of the best laps of the weekend at the challenging and technical New Zealand track.

With Lindblad and Zagazeta on the front row, Scoular heads row two alongside US young gun Josh Pierson. Michael Shin qualified fifth for with Johnson in sixth.

Supercars champion Brown couldn’t maintain his early session form and ended up seventh on the grid alongside Chinese F4 champion Enzo Yeh. Australia’s Patrick Heuzenroeder was ninth for and Sebastian Manson made it two Kiwis in the top ten.

2025 Castrol Toyota Formula Regional Oceania Championship – Round 1 Race 2 Qualifying