Home boy Scoular marks NZ racing debut with pole position

Kiwi Zack Scoular signalled his arrival to the NZ motorsport scene with an impressive pole position for the first race of the 2025 Castrol Toyota Formula Regional Oceania Championship at Taupo Motorsport Park this morning.

The 17-year-old Dubai-based mtec driver – making his New Zealand racing debut this weekend – put a delay to the start of the session behind him and wound up his speed as soon as the field were out on track.

Despite excellent conditions at the scenic track, and cooler morning temperatures, the drivers could not match the fast times of Friday morning testing but it was Tony Quinn Foundation Scholarship winner Scoular who got closest on his qualifying run, his best effort of 1 minute 23.616 seconds eclipsing Supercars champion Will Brown for the top spot.

“Honestly that was a bit of a surprise to me,” he said afterwards. “We had a lot of work to do last night but we have been over everything where we wanted to improve and I took a lot of time to reflect on my own performance and think about where I could be faster.

“The car was ultimately very similar to yesterday but I was able to get more out of myself. This track is unique and you cannot really afford to make a mistake.”

It was an unusual first session. Friday pace setter Nikita Johnson delayed the start when his car stopped a few metres out onto the circuit and it was Scoular, Brown and Matias Zagazeta who set the pace early in the session. Josh Pierson and Arvid Lindblad couldn’t match their searing pace from testing and were consistently chasing the leaders.

Brown was impressive in his Giles Motorsport-run car, always in the top three for the 15 minute qualifying session and clearly going faster after some set up changes to the car during Friday. He ended up in second just seven hundredths of a second behind Scoular.

Johnson and Lindblad locked out the second row for M2 Competition with team mate Zagazeta in fifth and a late charge by Australian Patrick Heuzenroeder snatching the outside spot on the third row.

Behind them it was Michael Shin and Pierson, with Enzo Yeh and Nicolas Monteiro rounding out the top ten. Sebastian Manson and Alex Crosbie were 11^th and 13^th respectively.

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