2019 Toyota Racing Series

The 2019 Castrol Toyota Racing Series was the fifteenth running of the Toyota Racing Series, the premier open-wheel motorsport category held in New Zealand. The series consisted of fifteen races at five meetings. It began on 10 January at Highlands Motorsport Park, in Cromwell, and concluded on 10 February with the 64th running of the New Zealand Grand Prix, at Circuit Chris Amon in Feilding.

2019 Toyota Racing Series

Drivers' Champion:
Liam Lawson

Previous

2018

Next

2020

The championship, as well as the 2019 New Zealand Grand Prix was won by rookie Liam Lawson; who became the first New Zealander to win the championship since Nick Cassidy in 2013.

Champion Liam Lawson and runner-up Marcus Armstrong both took five wins apiece, whilst Cameron Das, FIA Formula 3 European Championship driver Lucas Auer, Esteban Muth, Brendon Leitch and Artem Petrov all had one race win each.

Teams and drivers

Team	No.	Driver	Status	Rounds
MTEC Motorsport	5	Petru Florescu		All
	11	Jackson Walls[1]	R	2–5
	36	Kazuto Kotaka[2]	R	All
	54	Calan Williams[3]		All
Giles Motorsport	7	Raoul Hyman[4]		All
	9	Petr Ptáček[5]	R	All
	16	Tommy Smith[6]	R	All
	21	Dev Gore[7]		All
	48	Ken Smith[8]		5
M2 Competition	8	Marcus Armstrong[9]		All
	10	Liam Lawson[10]	R	All
	12	Artem Petrov[11]		All
	22	Lucas Auer[12]		All
	28	Cameron Das[13]		All
	30	Esteban Muth[5]	R	All
Victory Motor Racing	66	Parker Locke[14]	R	All
	86	Brendon Leitch[15]		All

Race calendar

The calendar for the series was announced on 19 June 2018, and will be held over five successive weekends in January and February.^[16] Races 2 and 3 of the second round at Teretonga were postponed to due high winds and rescheduled. Race 2 will be run at Hampton Downs, and Race 3 qualifying and race will be run at Taupō.^[17]

Round		Circuit	Date	Pole Position	Fastest Lap	Winning Driver	Winning Team
1	R1	Highlands Motorsport Park Cromwell, Otago	12 January	Raoul Hyman	Liam Lawson	Liam Lawson	M2 Competition
	R2		13 January		Brendon Leitch	Brendon Leitch	Victory Motor Racing
	R3			Lucas Auer	Liam Lawson	Liam Lawson	M2 Competition
2	R1	Teretonga Park Invercargill, Southland	19 January	Liam Lawson	Marcus Armstrong	Marcus Armstrong	M2 Competition
	R2		20 January	Races 2 and 3 cancelled due to unsafe high wind conditions.[17]
	R3
3	R1	Hampton Downs Motorsport Park Hampton Downs, North Waikato	25 January	[N 1]	Cameron Das	Artem Petrov	M2 Competition
	R2		26 January	Marcus Armstrong	Marcus Armstrong	Marcus Armstrong	M2 Competition
	R3		27 January		Liam Lawson	Liam Lawson	M2 Competition
	R4			Marcus Armstrong	Artem Petrov	Marcus Armstrong	M2 Competition
4	R1	Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park Taupō, South Waikato	2 February	Liam Lawson	Liam Lawson	Liam Lawson	M2 Competition
	R2			Liam Lawson	Marcus Armstrong	Lucas Auer	M2 Competition
	R3		3 February		Marcus Armstrong	Esteban Muth	M2 Competition
	R4			Lucas Auer	Lucas Auer	Marcus Armstrong	M2 Competition
5	R1	Manfeild: Circuit Chris Amon Feilding, Manawatū District	9 February	Liam Lawson	Marcus Armstrong	Marcus Armstrong	M2 Competition
	R2		10 February		Cameron Das	Cameron Das	M2 Competition
	R3			Lucas Auer	Liam Lawson	Liam Lawson	M2 Competition

Championship standings

The series had introduced a new drivers' championship points system for the season. Drivers were awarded the same number of points for Races 1 & 3. Race 2 featured a reversed grid of the top 6 to 8 finishers from Race 1, and awarded reduced points to the top 15 finishers. Drivers must have completed 75% of the race distance and be running at the finish to score points.^[18][19]

Scoring system

Race (starting grid from qualifying)

Position	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	9th	10th	11th	12th	13th	14th	15th	16th	17th	18th	19th	20th
Points	35	31	27	24	22	20	18	16	14	12	10	9	8	7	6	5	4	3	2	1

Reversed grid Race

Position	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	9th	10th	11th	12th	13th	14th	15th
Points	20	18	16	14	12	10	9	8	7	6	5	4	3	2	1

Drivers' championship

Pos. Driver HIG TER HMP TAU MAN Points 1 Liam Lawson 1 5 1 2 C C 7 3 1 Ret 1 2 3 3 2 5 1 356 2 Marcus Armstrong 2 3 2 1 C C 10 1 4 1 3 NC 8 1 1 9 2 346 3 Lucas Auer 3 Ret 4 5 C C Ret 4 3 15 2 1 7 2 3 2 Ret 270 4 Raoul Hyman 4 2 3 11 C C 5 2 9 10 5 3 6 5 9 6 4 270 5 Esteban Muth 6 4 11 9 C C Ret 6 2 5 7 6 1 4 6 3 5 258 6 Brendon Leitch 5 1 9 8 C C 3 14 10 4 13 5 2 9 4 4 6 245 7 Cameron Das 9 6 7 4 C C Ret 7 5 3 15 10 5 8 7 1 Ret 205 8 Calan Williams 11 7 8 7 C C Ret 8 8 7 8 8 9 7 5 7 Ret 183 9 Artem Petrov 10 Ret 6 3 C C 1 Ret 7 2 4 4 4 Ret DNS DNS Ret 181 10 Kazuto Kotaka 8 Ret 10 6 C C 11 9 6 6 9 15 10 6 Ret 10 3 176 11 Petr Ptáček 7 8 5 12 C C 2 Ret 11 12 14 7 11 Ret Ret 12 Ret 123 12 Jackson Walls 13 C C 8 5 Ret 8 6 13 12 10 10 Ret Ret 110 13 Dev Gore 14 9 13 10 C C 4 13 14 14 12 9 14 12 11 Ret Ret 109 14 Tommy Smith 15 12 12 14 C C 12 11 12 9 11 14 13 13 14 8 Ret 101 15 Parker Locke 13 11 14 15 C C 9 12 15 11 16 12 15 Ret 12 11 7 100 16 Petru Florescu 12 10 Ret Ret C C 6 10 13 13 10 11 Ret 11 8 Ret DNS 98 17 Ken Smith 13 13 8 27 Pos. Driver HIG TER HMP TAU MAN Points

Colour Result Gold Winner Silver Second place Bronze Third place Green Points classification Blue Non-points classification Non-classified finish (NC) Purple Retired, not classified (Ret) Red Did not qualify (DNQ) Did not pre-qualify (DNPQ) Black Disqualified (DSQ) White Did not start (DNS) Withdrew (WD) Race cancelled (C) Blank Did not practice (DNP) Did not arrive (DNA) Excluded (EX) Bold – Pole Italics – Fastest Lap Rookie

Footnotes

1. Race 1 at Hampton Downs was the make-up of Race 2 from Teretonga, featuring a partially reversed grid of the top six finishers from the first race.