Christian Mansell takes pole for FRegional Oceania season opener

Photo: TGR NZ

Christian Mansell took pole position for the first race of the 2024 Formula Regional Oceania season at Taupo.

Qualifying started in wet conditions, but drivers were able to switch to slicks during a mid-session red flag period and laptimes rapidly dropped. 

Giles Motorsport driver Mansell ended qualifying 0.765 seconds ahead of M2 Competition’s Roman Bilinski in second place, and was a further tenth of a second quicker than Gerrard Xie in third.

It was Tommy Smith who set the pace in the first half of the session, and he led Jett Bowling when the red flags were shown almost precisely halfway through the 15-minute session. Patrick Woods-Toth, who at that point was 10th fastest. had come to a stop on track.

Up until this point, the circuit had been gradually drying and the field had still been running on wet compound tyres. The switch to slicks was made during the stoppage and when qualifying got going again, the benchmark pace was immediately dropped by over a second.

Bilisnki went top of the order with a 1m29.194s, only for Mansell to lower the benchmark twice. By the end of qualifying, Mansell had improved to 1m27.763s.

Xie briefly held second but was knocked back to third by M2 team-mate Bilinski, who improved on his final lap to take second. Liam Sceats was the top driver from New Zealand in fourth, ahead of Kaleb Ngatoa and Michael Shin.

Alex Crosbie and Lucas Fecury qualified seventh and eighth, ahead of Kaden Probst and early pace-setter Smith. All of the Antipodean drivers will be eligible for Tasman Cup honours this weekend and in round two.

Qualifying results