Bilinski takes pole for FRegional Oceania race one at Manfeild

Photo: TGR NZ

Formula Regional Oceania’s early points leader Roman Bilinski took pole position for the first race of the second round of the season at Manfeild.

Bilinski topped the order early in qualifying and gradually lowered his fastest lap to take pole by 0.253 seconds over Giles Motorsport’s Christian Mansell. The gap was the largest between drivers in the 17-car field, which were covered by 1.439s on pace. 

Mansell did briefly take the top spot early in Q1 before being knocked down to second place by Bilinski. The M2 Competition run driver then lowered his benchmark laptime to 1m02.458s before red flags waved with two minutes remaining. 

MTEC Motorsport’s Kaden Probst had just put a wheel onto the kerbs and sent himself over the grass and then into the wall. He was able to get out of his car. 

While the session was stopped, light rain began to fall, but it wasn’t enough to significantly dampen the circuit before a restart took place which left just enough time for drivers to set one more flying lap each on the short track layout. 

Most of the field returned to the track to do so, but there was no late improvements and so Bilinski secured pole. 

M2’s Liam Sceats picked up third on the grid ahead of team-mate Nico Lacorte and Giles’ Kaleb Ngatoa. Gerrard Xie was only 0.015s behind him in sixth. 

Tommy Smith was MTEC’s top driver and qualified seventh, ahead of Titus Sherlock, Michael Shin and Patrick Woods-Toth. 

Qualifying results