After rain put a dampener on proceedings last year, there was plenty of thrilling action in this year’s Macau Grand Prix.
With the Guia circuit’s unforgiving nature catching out even the most highly rated of talents, it continues to provide a true test of drivers in single-seater, sportscar and tin-top machinery.
Here are the drivers who stood out the most from this year’s entertaining contests.
Theo nails it with double pass
Any driver who completes a sensational double overtake on the penultimate lap to secure victory in the Macau GP is worthy of a spot in this list. And Theo Nael’s bold move around the outside of both Enzo Deligny and Mari Boya approaching Lisboa as he capitalised upon the powerful tow was sensational.
With the race neutralised almost immediately afterwards it proved the race-defining moment and cemented the Frenchman’s name in the history books.
“When I saw that I was going to the outside of Deligny, I saw I was going much quicker than them [both],” explains Nael, who stepped back from FIA Formula 3 to take part in Formula Regional machinery again. “I knew that I had an opportunity to brake later than Mari and go for it.”
Despite his pole for the qualifying race, Pinnacle Motorsport driver Nael was not necessarily the fastest, but he was there when it mattered and his racecraft netted him the spoils.
Boya grows into a man
Alongside the Formula Regional regulars, it was great to see a smattering of FIA F3 racers effectively step down a level to contest the Macau GP. Among those was Mari Boya, third in this year’s F3 standings, and who demonstrated around the city streets exactly why he has been signed to Aston Martin’s academy.
Having surged from sixth on the grid to second in the qualifying race, he then took the fight to Freddie Slater during the opening stages of the GP. He brilliantly pounced upon the mid-race safety car restart and could easily have sealed the glory but for another caution that enabled Pinnacle Motorsport team-mate Nael to strike.
“For sure, when I saw the gap, I said, ‘This one is for me’,” says Boya of the moment when Slater crashed out. “I feel I could not do anything better.”
Boya would have been a deserving winner but ultimately the Macau jackpot did not quite fall in his favour. “I want to win everything but sometimes you cannot get what you want,” he concludes.
Supreme Slater is class of the GP field
Another year, another Macau disappointment for Freddie Slater. But, while he ended his weekend in the barriers exiting R Bend, he was unquestionably the standout driver from the Formula Regional field.
It was no surprise to see Slater’s name near the top of the timesheets throughout the weekend, after all his glittering CV includes Ginetta Junior, Italian F4 and Formula Regional European titles among his many notable achievements. But Macau provides a different test – one that Slater was seemingly mastering.
To win the qualifying race by 5.171 seconds – having built the majority of that margin in just four laps – is some statement. To then pull over 3s clear in the main contest underlined his ability, especially as he had to fight his way back past Boya.
“The pace has been incredible, we've been the fastest all weekend,” says Slater. “I think the [final] result here you have to take with a bit of a pinch of salt.”
No salt is required when assessing Slater’s talent, though – this weekend once again underlined why he is seemingly destined for the top. It was just the menacing Macau barriers that had the final say this time.
Kato is pick of the rookies
No fewer than seven Japanese drivers were on the grid for the Formula Regional World Cup, but the clear standout among them was Honda junior Taito Kato, who was bang on the pace from the word go with the fastest time in Thursday’s free practice session.
That proved to be the high point for the diminutive 17-year-old, who drove for ART Grand Prix in the Formula Regional European Championship and steps up to FIA F3 next year with the same team. But, despite only managing fifth in both the qualifying and main race, Kato was by far the most impressive Macau rookie, only slipping outside the top five in one session – a red-flag strewn first qualifying – the entire weekend.
“To be honest it was a good weekend,” he reflects. “It was my first time at Macau and on a street circuit, so P5 is quite positive. This experience will help me in Monaco next year in F3.”
Kato could also take satisfaction from his last-ditch move on ART team-mate Evan Giltaire at the final restart at Lisboa that ensured he was the French squad’s top finisher.
“Evan was really quick at the beginning of the season when I joined FRECA, and I learned a lot from him, so I’m glad I could finish the season by overtaking him!” adds Kato.
Roussel is the F4 master
The inaugural FIA Formula 4 World Cup was a brilliant addition to the Macau timetable and provided some of the best racing and most dramatic plotlines of the whole event. It boasted a quality line-up with six F4 champions (plus GB4 conqueror Ary Bansal) among the 20-strong field, all of whom were at the wheel of centrally-run machinery.
But it was Frenchman Jules Roussel – a mere third in his native series – who walked away as the maiden winner after enjoying a frantic scrap with his countryman Rayan Caretti that came to an end when the latter clouted the barriers through the Solitude Esses with two laps to go. “All of the season in French F4 we had kind of bad luck but the pace was there all of the season,” Roussel says. “We worked hard for it and to capitalise on the biggest event of the year was really great.”
Olivieri provides the move of the weekend
Think of Macau overtaking places and the high-speed Mandarin right-hander is not necessarily the most obvious. Especially around the outside. And definitely not on the first lap, on cold tyres.
But that is exactly what Emanuele Olivieri did on the opening tour of the FIA F4 World Cup qualification race. The Italian’s move on polesitter Sebastian Wheldon was the pass of the weekend and he somehow managed to keep it out of the barriers.
“I thought it was easy flat also on the outside, but it was not because I ended up quite close to the wall!” admits Olivieri, who won the F4 Middle East title earlier this year. “It was quite a good move!”
That is perhaps one of the understatements of the season. Olivieri subsequently resisted pressure from Fionn McLaughlin – the British F4 champion impressively rising through the field despite not setting a single timed lap in either practice session amid engine maladies – and triumphed after McLaughlin heartbreakingly clouted the barrier on the inside of the Melco Hairpin on the final tour. Olivieri then lost out at the start of the main race and had to settle for the runner-up spot, but his earlier antics will certainly live long in the memory.
Fantastic Fuoco proves unstoppable
After the events of 2024, you would have been hard pressed to find anyone in the Macau paddock that would begrudge Antonio Fuoco his FIA GT World Cup triumph.
Peerless in Superpole, the World Endurance Championship star led a Ferrari 1-2 in Saturday’s qualification race ahead of Yifei Ye, and put on a similar masterclass in Sunday’s main race to give Maranello a prize it had craved badly, all the more so after the contact between Fuoco and Raffaele Marciello’s BMW at Lisboa one year ago.
Marciello proved Fuoco’s nearest rival as the superior grunt of the BMW M4 GT3 EVO allowed ‘Lello’ to move up from fourth on the grid to second at the start of the main race.
An early safety car period looked as if it could give Marciello a chance to challenge for the lead at the restart, but Fuoco never gave his compatriot a sniff of a chance to pass.
“At the restart to be honest I was a bit scared looking at Lello’s start, so I tried to push hard in the last two corners to open up the gap a bit,” recalls Fuoco. “I almost lost the car at Mandarin, but I was pushing really hard and everything worked well.”
Eriksson’s surprise Audi form
He wasn’t a factor in the FIA GT World Cup victory battle, but Joel Eriksson provided a timely reminder of his talents on his first trip to Macau in six years.
Recruited by Phantom Global Racing, Eriksson was only making his second appearance in the Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II after a preparatory outing in GT World Challenge Asia on the streets of Beijing. But you wouldn’t have known that in first qualifying, when the Swedish driver logged the quickest time, blowing Audi veteran team-mate Christopher Haase out of the water.
“It went way better in qualifying than we expected, and I am still learning the car,” says Eriksson. “To be quickest in Q1 I think is something we should be proud of.”
In any other year, that would have put Eriksson on pole for the qualification race, but the new-for-2025 Superpole format didn’t suit the Audi, which struggled to get its front tyres in the right temperature window for its hot lap.
That left Eriksson fourth, where he finished the qualification race on Saturday, as well as the main race the next day. A 10-second penalty for bumping into Laurin Heinrich’s Porsche, who then tapped Ayhancan Guven into the Lisboa wall, dropped Eriksson from fourth to fifth in the final result, but that shouldn’t take the sheen off an impressive weekend.
Buchan is unexpected star of TCR
On a grid full of well-established international tin-top aces, Josh Buchan’s name did not particularly stand out. Yes, he is a two-time TCR Australia champion and, yes, he did top a TCR World Tour race in South Korea earlier this year, but not even Buchan expected to leave his first visit to Macau as a winner.
Buchan’s Hyundai Elantra triumphed in the second TCR Guia race and was aided by starting on pole on the reversed grid. But that should not diminish Buchan’s achievement for he faced relentless pressure throughout the 10-lap contest. Initially that was from Santiago Urrutia’s Lynk & Co 03 but, after he tangled with Mikel Azcona’s Hyundai, the threat was then posed by Ma Qing Hua’s Lynk & Co.
“It's the best victory of my career, beats the championships, it beats anything I’ve done to this point,” says Buchan. “I used every trick – clean and dirty – I had out there, and it was coming back in a wheelbarrow or coming back as it is, and we won.”
The first encounter was led throughout by Nestor Girolami’s Hyundai while third for Yann Ehrlacher (Lynk & Co) was enough for him to clinch the World Tour title. But it was Buchan who left as the real star.
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