A gamble gone wrong in the first race of Formula Regional Oceania’s third round at Hampton Downs seemed to portend a bleak weekend for Kaleb Ngatoa. Instead, the Giles Motorsport driver fought his way up the grid on Sunday and wrapped up another Hampton Downs visit with an emotional victory.

By Juan Arroyo

As the clouds cleared over Hampton Downs, decision time approached.

Intermittent rain hit the circuit throughout Friday and the early hours of Saturday. Minutes before all cars went out to the grid for the first race, the track began to dry – but it was still damp enough to suit wet tyres, and some teams predicted rain on the way. One thing was clear: whichever tyres they picked to start would make or break their strategy.

Only one driver besides Ngatoa, MTEC Motorsport’s Kaden Probst, started on wet tyres. While the commentators made puzzled comments on their strategy choice, Ngatoa backed his decision on the grid.

“I’ve got to try something,” he said. “This is my opinion. I spoke with the team, we talked about it, and this is what we think. I trust them, I trust myself, and this is where we’re going to go.”

The wet-weather tyres worked to a charm in the opening stages. Ngatoa, who started fifth, leapfrogged his way to a four-second lead over Probst in a matter of two laps. Probst, meanwhile, was ahead of Liam Sceats – the highest dry-tyre runner at this stage – by almost a second.

But it wasn’t long before the drying track betrayed their gamble. Ngatoa maintained the lead until the fifth lap, by which point he was lapping around four seconds slower than championship leader Roman Bilinski and Sceats behind. They passed him easily at the end of the lap.

Despite plummeting race pace, Ngatoa refused to pit. His team predicted that in two laps’ time, on lap seven, there would be a downpour strong enough to help Ngatoa back to the front within four to five laps. They also acknowledged on the broadcast that the choice to stay out was a blind act of faith.

The race went on; the laps went by. No rain. Probst pitted for slicks on lap six and lost a minute to the leaders Ngatoa and Giles Motorsport held tight to their earlier prediction even as he continued to drop down the order, his lap times eventually 12 seconds slower than race leader Bilinski’s. Unsurprisingly, he was lapped by multiple drivers he once led.

Late in the race, a glimmer of hope – figuratively, it should be clarified – appeared for Ngatoa. With just a handful of laps to go, a dense cloud cover formed above parts of the circuit, and wind speeds also picked up. Rain was imminent. The television cameras had not caught any drops yet, but everyone – drivers, pit crew, fans – knew it was coming. As the broadcast panned back to Bilinski and Sceats’ fight for the lead on lap 15, the heavens opened over Hampton Downs, 10 laps later than Ngatoa and Giles predicted.

Indeed, it came too late. The safety car came out before Ngatoa could unlap himself, but he then made contact with Nicola Lacorte at Turn 2 on a lap that was eventually annulled. The red flag was quickly brought out, and he was classified 16th, a lap down on the leaders and with a 30-second penalty for the contact with Lacorte.

Sunday offered Ngatoa a chance to reset, with qualifying for the feature race first on the agenda. The Kiwi driver immediately responded, securing a third-place start.

In the second race, Ngatoa faced the mammoth task of recovering from 16th on the grid. The Giles Motorsport driver wasted no time climbing up to 12th on the opening lap. Over the next nine laps, he manoeuvred his way up to seventh place and remained there for the second half of the race. Ngatoa gained nine positions, the most out of any driver in race two.

The Kiwi driver benefitted from having virtually no wear on his slick tyres as they were left unused in race one. Because lap times have not varied greatly between the field this season, especially inside the top six, the difference in tyre life had a big role in boosting Ngatoa’s race pace. While he could not break into the top six for said reason, he matched their pace while climbing through the field in one of his standout drives of the season. But the best was still to come.

Then came race three, for which Ngatoa had gained a spot on the starting grid to start second following Gerrard Xie’s withdrawal after a heavy crash earlier in the day.

In an intense opening lap, Ngatoa and Bilinski went side by side into Turn 1. The Polish driver had the advantage into the next corner, but after locking his brakes at the end of the straight, he left room for Ngatoa to attack the inside. The pair nearly went side by side again into the next U-section. The Kiwi driver maintained his line on the outside, which then turned into an easy defence of the inside line into Turn 4.

Over the next laps, Ngatoa focused on building a one-second margin to Bilinski in the early phases. Bilinski The M2 driver set out to do exactly the opposite. He completed the fastest lap of the race, a record 1:29.223, on the seventh lap while he ate away at Ngatoa’s lead. On lap 11, the Polish driver achieved the record again with a time of 1:29.067s as the gap closed to around half a second.

Over the next 12 laps, both drivers stayed in the mid-1m29s lap time range. Nothing could separate the pair as they gapped the rest of the field. Bilinski kept Ngatoa on his toes despite having overheating tyres and dirty air from the car in front.

On the last lap, at the end of the long straight that precedes Turn 2, Bilinski showed his nose but remained too far back to finish the move. Less than half a second separated the two leaders through the lap’s 10 turns, and Ngatoa took the chequered flag by just 0.389s.

“Roman did a good job putting pressure on me the whole race,” Ngatoa said after the race. “I just had to keep telling myself, ‘Calm down, just breathe’. That’s all I had to do. Giles gave me the car to be able to do this.”

“I had a good start and instantly we had good pace, so I didn’t really have to push too much. It wasn’t until I saw Roman pushing that I thought, ‘I’d better get going’. The car was magnificent, the whole team at Giles did an awesome job, and I can’t thank them enough.’”

Ngatoa, the first New Zealander to win in Formula Regional Oceania this season, was celebrated as a local hero. Liam Lawson, in attendance for the weekend, hugged the 22-year-old post-race. So too did his parents, Robbie Ngatoa and Tracey Toulmin.

In the post-race interview, Ngatoa also described his feelings after taking the chequered flag: “It was quite emotional, that in-lap. I felt like a bit of a pussy, but it means so much to me. It just shows.”

With his win, the Giles Motorsport driver also claimed the annual Denny Hulme Memorial Trophy, named for the nation’s only F1 champion.

“It means a lot [to win at home]. Old Kenny over there has helped me out through my career,” said Ngatoa, pointing to 82-year-old Ken Smith, a three-time New Zealand Grand Prix winner. Smith was present to hand Ngatoa the race winner’s trophy on the podium. “He’s always saying that I should win this trophy, and to finally do it means a lot.”

Ngatoa enters the fourth of five rounds of the championship this weekend at Ruapuna third in the standings on 157 points, 83 behind Bilinski.

Header photo credit: Toyota Gazoo Racing New Zealand