Photo: Macau Grand Prix
The Chinese Formula 4 championship has unveiled its provisional calendar for 2021, with the inclusion of two street circuit events.
Last year the COVID-19 pandemic reduced the season down to three rounds, with two quadruple-headers at Zhuhai being followed by a visit to the streets of Macau to be the qualifying series for the Macau Grand Prix.
Both the qualification race and the grand prix-awarding main race were won by Smart Life Racing’s Charles Leong, one of two local drivers on the grid and the third Macanese driver to win the grand prix since its first running in 1954.
While Bruno Michel’s Formula 1-supporting FIA Formula 3 Championship and GT Sport’s F3-level Euroformula series both aim to be the qualifying series for the Macau GP this year, Chinese F4 has now said it will be racing on the Guia Circuit too.
Macau will the final event of a four-round season that starts at Zhuhai on June 18-20, then will take to the streets of Wuhan in September.
The city has hosted Chinese F4 before, in 2018, and touring car stars Gordon Shedden and Frederic Vervisch took part.
Round three of the season takes place at the highly rated Ningbo circuit on November 5-11 as a support to the World Touring Car Cup, then two weeks later on November 18-20 racing will conclude in Macau alongside TCR Asia.
It will be the second time that F4 has visited Macau, although in previous years other lower-level single-seater series raced there such as Formula BMW Pacific.
The formalisation of the local series’ presences on the Macau GP bill is a strong sign that the race will be taking place, with the event organisers yet to make a public announcement on the 2021 edition despite it being all but guaranteed to be going ahead right now.
What still is in limbo on which series will take the coveted Macau GP title itself, which could come down to a cost analysis decision from the event organisers. Chinese F4’s presence also means there is now no chance that both FIA F3 cars and Euroformula’s Dallara 320 could be racing in Macau, as there is not enough room in the weekend schedule for both.