It was not a Frenchman who won this Sunday in Macau, but several of them! The French R-ace GP team, led by Thibaut de Merindol, won the first FR World Cup contested in the streets of Macau this weekend. Author of pole position in qualifying on Friday, and a victory in the qualifying race the day before, the American Ugo Ugochukwu won the Macau Grand Prix and therefore succeeds Luke Browning, winner last year.
The McLaren protégé delivered an ultra-solid race. Never put in difficulty by his closest pursuer Oliver Goethe (2nd), he constantly knew how to take cover at each post-safety car restart and above all avoided the traps into which some of his little comrades fell throughout of the weekend. He is accompanied on the podium by Oliver Goethe and Noël Léon, who also managed to maintain their positions on the podium. Freddie Slater, 4th for a long time, wanted so much to get the podium that he tried everything for everything in the penultimate lap in Lisboa, ending his race in the tire wall.
Deligny at the foot of the podium
This maneuver allowed Frenchman Enzo Deligny to finish in a promising 4th place, just off the podium, after a very serious weekend led with great mastery. His compatriots were not unworthy either. Evan Giltaire, forced to retire in the first lap, was in the top 10, while Théophile Naël finished 14th.
As a reminder, this is the first time that the Macau Grand Prix has given pride of place to Regional F3 single-seaters. A decision was in fact taken last winter by the FIA to go down one step in the pyramid the cars lined up on the Guia circuit, mainly for safety reasons, when we know the power (around 350 hp) of the F3 FIA which ran there until then. Unfortunately, this did not prevent crashes and incidents of all kinds.
Despite a start under safety car regime, for safety reasons undoubtedly due to all the crashes that have occurred since the start of the weekend, the race was soon immobilized (red flag) for several minutes following a pile-up. in order intervened at the Lisboa bend. Arriving three abreast, James Wharton tried to pass around the outside but was irreparably greeted by the wall of tires.
Evan Giltaire, who was following him closely, was unable to avoid the collision with his left rear wheel. Just like four other drivers (Le, Daryanani, Bowling, Kobayashi and Rodrigues) who were unable to avoid the Australian and were impaled into him. Another safety car intervened 11 laps from the goal after an incident involving Liu Ruiqi, then another four laps from the end, before also ending up under safety car regime… as a symbol…
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