Taupo TRS: Norris wins Denny Hulme Memorial Trophy

The win was Norris' fifth in the campaign, enabling him to extend his lead over nearest rival Pedro Piquet to 86 points - with 225 available in the Manfield finale next week.

The first green flag stretch of the final Taupo race lasted just a few seconds and was over when James Munro clashed with Artem Markelov into Turn 1 - with the former having to pit for a nosecone change and the latter retiring on the spot.

Norris had stayed out front at the line, and would control the subsequent restart, only for the race to be suspended again.

This time the stoppage required red flags, as Rodrigo Baptista was stranded at Turn 5 and his car needing to be lifted away.

When the race got going again, it finally settled into a rhythm as the leading duo of Norris and Piquet escaped out front and Guan Yu Zhou ran as best of the rest, having passed Brendon Leitch at the earlier restart.

Having challenged Norris for victory earlier in the weekend, Piquet stayed within 1.5sec of the Brit for much of the distance in this race, but dropped off significantly in the final five laps, and had to settle for second.

Zhou rounded off yet another M2 Competition 1-2-3, with Ferdinand Habsburg taking fourth off Leitch, having started 10th after a grid penalty.

Taylor Cockerton was sixth, ahead of Bruno Baptista and Jehan Daruvala, with Canadian duo Kami Laliberte and Devlin DeFrancesco rounding out the top 10.

Pos.	Driver	Team	Time/Delay
1	Lando Norris	M2	31:37.586
2	Pedro Piquet	M2	3.453
3	Guan Yu Zhou	M2	12.304
4	Ferdinand Habsburg	Giles	15.516
5	Brendon Leitch	Victory	19.369
6	Taylor Cockerton	ETEC	19.881
7	Bruno Baptista	Victory	20.277
8	Jehan Daruvala	M2	20.864
9	Kami Laliberte	M2	23.165
10	Devlin DeFrancesco	Giles	25.759
11	James Munro	Giles	26.066
12	Will Owen	Giles	27.126
13	Timothe Buret	ETEC	28.830
14	Antoni Ptak	Giles	30.200
15	Theo Bean	ETEC	30.624
16	Julian Hanses	Victory	1 Lap
Ret	Rodrigo Baptista	ETEC
Ret	Nicolas Dapero	Giles
Ret	Artem Markelov	M2