Liam Sceats took the chequered flag first in the 68th New Zealand Grand Prix on Sunday to wrap up the Formula Regional Oceania season, holding off a chasing Callum Hedge through the early and middle stages of the race to take a lights-to-flag victory at Highlands Motorsport Park.

By Juan Arroyo

The victory was the M2 Competition driver’s third of the season and his second of the weekend. The New Zealand driver finished second in the points standings behind teammate Roman Bilinski, who clinched the title in race two earlier in the day.

Sceats in control

“He chose [Michael] Jordan’s number, and he was flying like Jordan today,” commentator Jonathan Green said shortly after Sceats took the chequered flag. That he was.

Only MTEC Motorsport’s Hedge could get close to Sceats in the 27-lap race. Sceats got a good start off of the grid, and Hedge found himself too far back to attempt any overtaking moves on his countryman on the opening lap.

Sceats and Hedge exchanged fastest times in the first three laps, the pair separated by less than a second. Then, from lap four until lap 13, the two drivers set near-identical times. On average, the difference in lap times between Sceats and Hedge in this period was below a tenth of a second.

Passing has been made difficult all season by certain tracks’ characteristics and the need to save tyres at times. This was no different in Hedge’s case at Highlands. His front tyres would have been under increased strain from following Sceats so closely for much of the first half of the race.

Hedge’s engineer explained on the television broadcast that his driver’s strategy was to conserve his tyres whilst keeping the gap to Sceats small, the goal being to mount an attack for the lead with seven laps to go.

As they entered the second half of the race, Sceats’ pace was consistently in the mid-1:29s while Hedge began to lap around half a second slower. Sceats put in slightly slower times in the final laps of the race but continued to increase his lead over Hedge. The M2 driver eventually took the chequered flag by 5.6 seconds after being virtually unchallenged over the previous 12 laps.

Shin and Bilinski fly through the field

M2 Competition’s Michael Shin was Sunday’s big winner behind the leading pair. Shin gained four positions to earn himself a third-place finish, his fifth podium of the season.

Starting seventh, the Korean driver made one position at the start and then benefitted from teammate Gerrard Xie’s off-track excursion out of Turn 6. Xie lost control of the rear of the car coming out wide of the hairpin and tapped the wall with his left-rear tyre, leading him out onto the grass.

Shin made the rest of his progress by passing Alex Crosbie, Bryce Aron and Jacob Abel on the second lap. Crosbie went wide into Turn 9, almost touching the grass, which helped Aron and Shin pass him easily. Abel in front exited the same corner almost as slowly, and Shin was swiftly side by side with the MTEC driver into the cambered Turn 10.

Shin and Abel stayed wheel to wheel into the fast Turn 11, which resulted in contact but no significant damage to either car. The Korean driver was comfortably past by the next hairpin.

Shin was unable to secure third in the standings with this performance, which he would have attained had rookie champion Patrick Woods-Toth scored fewer than four points. Instead, the Canadian finished ninth and scored 14 points, putting Shin just ten points shy of a top-three finish.

Further back, Bilinski’s surges up the field have become routine to the point no one else has been able to replicate them. The M2 driver had an even bigger climb than usual to make on Sunday, though, as he started the race 12th following a crash in the first stage of qualifying on Saturday, and would fight his way up to take fifth at the chequered flag.

Bilinski made up four places on the opening lap of the race and got up to sixth place by overtaking Elliott Cleary and Crosbie the following two laps. Despite setting the fastest lap on lap 15, Bilinski remained in that position for the rest of the race – until the final corner of the final lap.

Bilinski and Aron collide at the flag

Bilinski was following Aron closely entering Highlands’ final corner – a fast, sweeping right-hander that leads onto the main straight at full throttle – when the American careered into the outside wall. Fractions of a second later, unable to avoid the damaged car in front, Bilinski hit Aron’s right-rear tyre with the front of his car. The Polish driver’s Toyota FT-60 mounted Aron’s, then hurtled over it before crashing to the ground, mercifully right side up.

Both cars crossed the finish line, still at relatively high speeds, with Bilinski fifth ahead of Aron.

A representative from series organiser Toyota Gazoo Racing confirmed to Feeder Series shortly after the race that both drivers were “okay, just sore” following the incident.

Turn 22 at Highlands saw a crash similar to Aron’s on Saturday, when Giles Motorsport’s Kaleb Ngatoa struck the same wall at high speed during qualifying. Ngatoa sustained a broken hand from the accident and consequently withdrew from the rest of the weekend.

What did the drivers say?

In the post-race interview, Sceats said taking the victory, his third in four races, was “unbelievable”. It marked his third win in four races, though he conceded that his strong ending to the season “wasn’t strong enough” to overhaul Bilinski.

“At the start of the season, I thought we were a little bit unlucky not to get some better results, but to come on strong at the end of the season, it makes it feel very sweet,” Sceats said. 

Hedge said he didn’t have the pace to challenge for the win and felt he “destroyed [the tyres] a bit too early”. The New Zealand native then congratulated Sceats on his victory: “If it wasn’t going to be me to win, I really wanted it to be him,” he said of his 2023 M2 Competition teammate and former Saint Kentigern College schoolmate.

Asked if he felt pressure from Shin in the closing stages, Hedge said he tended to avoid looking in the mirror but added that he knew Shin would run deep on his overtaking attempt on the last lap and thus left the door open for the Korean driver.

Shin, meanwhile, expressed his satisfaction at finishing on the podium following a crash in qualifying on Saturday.

“For me, this weekend is very special,” he said. “It was looking very gloomy for the rest of the weekend [after the crash], but I’m so thankful to the team. They got the car back together and I could do all three races. I’m so happy to end the season with a podium.”

How did the standings change?

The order of the top four – Bilinski, Sceats, Woods-Toth, Shin – was unchanged from before the race.

Crosbie, meanwhile, overtook Ngatoa for fifth by just one point as Xie drew level with him but placed behind on countback. Ngatoa had been third in the points before sustaining the hand injury that forced him to withdraw from the races.

Behind Tommy Smith, Christian Mansell and Nicola Lacorte, all of whom left the championship partway through the season, the returning Elliott Cleary and Jett Bowling both moved up to 11th and 12th.

Abel’s three top-five finishes this weekend helped him pass Titus Sherlock for 13th in the standings. Fellow Indy Nxt driver Aron, who won the second race of the weekend, jumped to 15th ahead of Landan Matriano Lim and Lucas Fecury.

Despite entering only the final round, Hedge’s two second places and one fifth place put him on 74 points, level with full-season entrant Jake Bonilla and ahead of Kaden Probst, who withdrew midway through the fourth round. Behind Probst were Sebastian Manson, who entered the final two rounds after turning 16, and Ryder Quinn, who finished the first grand prix on his grandfather’s track eighth in another one-off entry.

Header photo credit: Tayler Burke / Toyota Gazoo Racing NZ