Auer and Serrales top Saturday qualifying sessions

Lucas Auer will start the first race of the new Toyota Racing Series season at Teretonga race from pole after topping the timesheets in the first qualifying session, while Felix Serralles grabbed pole for the Sunday feature race in session two.

Auer emerged as a pacesetter for the first 15-minute session, setting a benchmark time of 54.639 seconds shortly before the session timer ran out. In that time window, Brit Alex Lynn secured a front row start with a time just a tenth short of that set by the poleman. Nick Cassidy and Serralles made up the second row while Bruno Bonifacio rounded up the top five. Canadian Nicholas Latifi impressively beat Pipo Derani and Steijn Schothorst for sixth, while rookie Jann Mardenborough narrowly missed out on ninth to Tanart Satienthirakul.

The second session that took part immediately after the first was red-flagged twice, in some way owing that to the difficult weather conditions. Serralles came out on top in the shortened run, setting the quickest time of a minute and 2.056 seconds. Again, it was Lynn who took second, after leading the timesheets for a big part of the session. Damon Leitch and Schothorst both improved on their grid results from the first session, taking third and fourth respectively.

Race 1 takes place at 15:00 local time (GMT -13).

Qualifying Session 1, grid for Race 1