Photo: Toyota Racing NZ
M2 Competition’s Brandon Maisano took the victory in the second race of the opening Toyota Racing Series weekend at Ruapuna Park.
Starting from second, the French driver snuck past pole-sitter Ferdinand Habsburg at the start and controlled the race with a lead of two seconds.
Habsburg kept his second place up until a safety car period which was triggered by Artem Markelov retiring in a crash. At the restart the Formula Renault 1.6 NEC graduate had to succumb to Irish driver?Charlie Eastwood.
Another accident among several cars including?Brendon Leitch?and?Dzhon Simonyan brought out the red flag, and with two laps to go, the race finished prematurely. The results were taken from the end of the 12th lap.
Race one winner Lance Stroll finished fourth, followed by American Santino Ferrucci. Mathias Kristensen would have been sixth, but a ten-second time penalty for a false start dropped him to 13th.
Promoted at his expense to complete the top ten were Arjun Maini,?Alfonso Celis,?Sam MacLeod, Damon Leitch and James Munro.
Race results
| Pos. | Driver | Team | Time/Gap |
| 1 | Brandon Maisano | M2 Competition | 12 laps in 20:01.109 |
| 2 | Charlie Eastwood | M2 Competition | +0.587 |
| 3 | Ferdinand Habsburg | Victory Motor Racing | +1.082 |
| 4 | Lance Stroll | M2 Competition | +1.744 |
| 5 | Santino Ferrucci | Giles Motorsport | +2.309 |
| 6 | Arjun Maini | M2 Competition | +3.815 |
| 7 | Alfonso Celis | Giles Motorsport | +4.676 |
| 8 | Sam MacLeod | Giles Motorsport | +5.409 |
| 9 | Damon Leitch | Victory Motor Racing | +5.887 |
| 10 | James Munro | Giles Motorsport | +6.165 |
| 11 | Jamie Conroy | M2 Competition | +7.384 |
| 12 | Matteo Ferrer | ETEC Motorsport | +8.481 |
| 13 | Mathias Kristensen | M2 Competition | +13.109* |
| 14 | Brendon Leitch | Victory Motor Racing | +1 lap |
| 15 | Dzhon Simonyan | Giles Motorsport | +1 lap |
| 16 | Nikita Mazepin | ETEC Motorsport | +2 laps |
| 17 | Thomas Randle | ETEC Motorsport | +2 laps |
| Not classified | |||
| Stefan Riener | Victory Motor Racing | +5 laps | |
| Artem Markelov | Giles Motorsport | +5 laps | |
| Callum Ilott | ETEC Motorsport | +6 laps | |
*Ten-second penalty for false start