Photo: Gavin Baker Photography
Reigning USF Pro 2000 champion Louis Foster will join Giles Motorsport for the final three rounds of the Formula Regional Oceania season, and will make his debut at Manfeild this weekend.
The 19-year-old Englishman joins the series to keep himself race sharp before he steps up to Indy Nxt with Andretti Autosport.
He has experience in British Formula 4, where he won six races, and BRDC British Formula 3, where he won three times, then he was Euroformula runner-up in 2021 and won seven races en route to last year’s USFP2000 title.
Giles’ line-up could be expanding to five cars for the rest of the season, as British F4 graduate Adam Fitzgerald is also joining the team for the last three rounds and the team has run Chloe Chambers, Bree Morris and Ryan Shehan so far.
Another addition to the grid this weekend is Billy Frazer, who has raced in the series before and prepared for his comeback by joining pre-event testing on Thursday.
Frazer was fastest in the first half-hour session, setting a 1m04.913s lap that put him 0.073 seconds ahead of Josh Mason. Jacob Abel and Fitzgerald were also within a tenth of a second of the fastest lap.
Points leader Charlie Wurz was only fifth fastest, but bounced back in session two to set the pace by 0.010s.
Mason, Fitzgerald and James Penrose completed a closely matched top five, with Liam Sceats down in 14th the only driver not to better their fastest lap from session one.
Pre-event test results
| Pos | Driver | Team | Time | Gaps | Laps |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Charlie Wurz | M2 Competition | 1m04.696s | 44 | |
| 2 | Josh Mason | Kiwi Motorsport | 1m04.706s | +0.010s | 44 |
| 3 | Adam Fitzgerald | Giles Motorsport | 1m04.816s | +0.120s | 42 |
| 4 | James Penrose | Kiwi Motorsport | 1m04.865s | +0.169s | 46 |
| 5 | Billy Frazer | Kiwi Motorsport | 1m04.870s | +0.174s | 39 |
| 6 | Jacob Abel | Kiwi Motorsport | 1m04.957s | +0.261s | 44 |
| 7 | Ryan Shehan | Giles Motorsport | 1m05.043s | +0.347s | 43 |
| 8 | Tom McLennan | Kiwi Motorsport | 1m05.056s | +0.360s | 48 |
| 9 | Callum Hedge | M2 Competition | 1m05.091s | +0.395s | 41 |
| 10 | Bree Morris | Giles Motorsport | 1m05.183s | +0.487s | 42 |
| 11 | Chloe Chambers | Giles Motorsport | 1m05.405s | +0.709s | 45 |
| 12 | Ryder Quinn | M2 Competition | 1m05.427s | +0.731s | 52 |
| 13 | Lucas Fecury | Kiwi Motorsport | 1m05.529s | +0.833s | 42 |
| 14 | Liam Sceats | M2 Competition | 1m05.640s | +0.944s | 44 |
| 15 | David Morales | M2 Competition | 1m05.687s | +0.991s | 34 |