Allan on the pace in Friday testing

Hugo Allan set the pace on Friday with the fastest time in all three sessions at Taupo International Motorsport Park as the 25 drivers in the new-look Bridgestone GR86 Championship revved up for their first weekend of action.

Allan – who has always gone well in Toyota 86s at the Taupo track – was first to post a significant time for the season, topping the first ever official session for the Bridgestone GR86 Championship with a fine lap of 1 minute 40.429 seconds, well inside the lap record for the older model car.

The notable thing about Allan’s lap was the gap to the rest of the 25 car field. Mere tenths have separated the field in most of the on-track sessions in the build-up to the championship, but Allan’s advantage of almost five tenths was by some margin the biggest gap.

Behind him and showing intent for the season ahead were three high quality ‘newbies’ in Chris White, Zach Blincoe and Josh Bethune.

Hugo was fastest again the second – slightly slower – session but this time with a vastly reduced margin of just over one tenth of a second from highly-rated Australian Cooper Barnes,  a consistent Caleb Byers and White.

Hayden Bakkerus – another product of domestic NZ karting and junior single seater racing – was fifth fastest and first of the drivers who took part in last season’s championship in the previous generation TR86.

John Penny, the oldest in the field, backed up his first session with another top ten with the top 20 runners covered by just over a second.

Allan made it a clean sweep of all three sessions with fastest time in the third and final twenty minutes of the day, this time finishing ahead of Chris White by three tenths of a second and setting himself up as the favourite for the first weekend in the new-look championship.

“I’m quite surprised with how well it’s gone today to be honest, but you never really know what everyone else is doing and now as the fastest all my data is shared so who knows what will happen tomorrow and the rest of the weekend,” said Allan after the final session.

“I am enjoying the car though, and the tyre. Its quicker everywhere than the old car, under braking, through the corner and out of the corner so it’s a lot of fun to drive.”

The action begins in the championship proper Saturday morning with qualifying in the morning and the first ever race in New Zealand for the Toyota GR86 on Saturday afternoon.