MACAO, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- McLaren junior Ugo Ugochukwu successfully negotiated four safety car restarts to take a pole-to-flag win in a stop-start FIA FR World Cup race at the 2024 Macao Grand Prix.
Although the race took place in the dry, rain earlier in the day had left damp patches on the tarmac, and with uneven conditions on the Guia Circuit's start-finish straight, officials elected to start the race behind the safety car.
When it peeled off after one lap, Ugochukwu led convincingly away from Oliver Goethe and Noel Leon, but the race was red-flagged when James Wharton ran wide and hit the outer wall at the notorious Lisboa Bend, triggering a multi-car pile-up that blocked the circuit as several other drivers ploughed unsighted into the wreckage.
The race was restarted under the safety car after the debris had been cleared, and again Ugochukwu made the perfect start, but the race's rhythm was disrupted once more when Liu Ruiqi, the race's only Chinese runner, clouted the wall in Guia's tricky uphill section, triggering another safety car deployment to clear the wreckage.
Racing resumed four laps later, but was quickly neutralised yet again to allow marshals to clear the stricken car of Sofa Ogawa, who stopped on track just after turn 1. A two-lap dash to the finish ensued, and with separate incidents occurring at different sections of the track on the final lap, the race ended under Safety Car conditions, with Ugochukwu becoming the first American winner of the Macao Grand Prix since Bob Earl in 1981.
"I can't describe the feeling. It was quite a tricky race, pushing the whole way, but I was confident in the pace," said Ugochukwu, who had a perfect weekend, having won Saturday's qualification race after having also set the fastest time in Friday qualifying.
"Ever since [qualifying] we've been really quick. Of course, I won the qualification race as well, but there was still the most important one, and we managed to do it. We had a great weekend, and super happy to finally get the job done.
"Every Safety Car restart I had to make sure I got perfectly, otherwise with the slipstream I would have had to be really defensive into the first braking zone, so that was my full focus, getting good restarts and nailing the last two corners to give myself a bit of a gap.
"Every time I saw a Safety Car I thought 'oh, again', because my gap got cut back to zero, but I managed to stay in the lead every time. I was pushing as hard as I could in the rest of the lap, definitely got close to some walls, but managed to keep it together."
Behind Ugochukwu, Goethe and Leon rounded out the top three, with Shanghai-born Enzo Deligny fourth ahead of Matteo De Palo.
First held in 1954, the Macao Grand Prix has grown to become one of the world's most prestigious single-seater races, and is widely seen as an important stepping stone for young drivers on their way to Formula 1.
Having been run as a Formula 3 event for the majority of its existence, this year saw the Macao Grand Prix run for the first time to Formula Regional specification, equivalent to three tiers below Formula 1. ■
