Photo: Macau Grand Prix
The inaugural FIA FRegional World Cup hit the marks it needed to, and a lot of barriers, in Macau
While the Macau Grand Prix is mostly associated with Formula 3, the event itself is better known to a wider audience – and to professional drivers – now as the home of the FIA GT World Cup. As iconic as the conclusion to the 2017 grand prix is, it’s been pile-ups and wheel-to-wheel racing in the sportscar races that have stuck in more people’s minds of late.
The GT element of the weekend has thrived in part due to the instability of the titular single-seater race during the FIA’s retirement of F3 and the COVID-19 pandemic. Between the 2019 and 2023 editions of the FIA F3 World Cup in Macau were three editions of the grand prix which ran as part of the Chinese Formula 4 championship and attracted only ‘local’ talents.
Luke Browning starred to win on F3’s return last year, but that weekend brought to the fore logistic and budgetary markers that the big-spending teams of the Formula 1 support paddock (whether they wish to be big spenders or not) did not see as essential to their schedules.
Confirmation that FRegional would replace F3 in Macau did not come until May of this year, and that was too late. As in several years too late.
F3 is now just a name owned by a company, and the rights to that name is exercised by Formula Motorsport Ltd under agreements with the company that owns Formula 1. Formula 2 and F3 used to be categories, and the purpose of the Macau GP for many years was to bring the best active F3 drivers from around the world together, as well as past category stars and future category aspirants, to go up against each other on a very special track and with all the attention on them.
Drivers would join teams specifically for the event, but in 2019 and 2023 the event was treated as part of the FIA F3 Championship schedule for many. It was either the last event of their programme with a team, or their first with a squad they had already signed to spend the next year with in the F1 support paddock.
The 2023 Macau GP
A few other names crept in, with seats becoming available if teams’ regular drivers from that year were seeking to spend November on holiday rather than travelling to Macau and potentially racking up massive repair bills.
The contrast was immediately noticeable when the entry list for the 2024 Macau GP came out.
The fourth-tier category had attracted a 27-car grid, with one driver from F2, six from F3-level series, 12 who were racing in FRegional-based series and seven from F4.
Of the drivers capping off campaigns in FRegional (or Eurocup-3) cars, only seven were with the teams they’d already spent most of 2024 with. The winner, Ugo Ugochukwu, was driving for R-ace GP but he raced for Prema in FRegional Europe this season and will be with it again in FIA F3 next year.
The mix of experience levels inevitably led to crashes, and the minimal dry weather running drivers got before the second qualifying session no doubt impacted the amount of red flags then. The FIA called a meeting to remind drivers about the respect they have to show the Guia circuit, but in truth the embarrassing on-track errors came from R-ace’s Tuukka Taponen, Prema’s Dino Beganovic and Alex Dunne and KCMG by Pinnacle Motorsport’s Mari Boya. All had raced in F3 previously, and only Taponen was new to Macau.
Having been disqualified from the qualification race for overtaking much of the field on the formation lap, Boya redeemed himself in the main race by coming from 27th and last on the grid to finish ninth.
FRegional being the long-term home category of the Macau GP immediately threw up exciting possibilities that the FIA chose to not act on for 2024.
They determined in June that it would be a race for spec cars, with each entry to run a Tatuus T-318 chassis fitted with a 1.8-litre Autotecnica-built Alfa Romeo engine.
Photo: FIA
The T-318 is well known to the European teams who race it in FREC and FRegional Middle East, but is an all-new combination to teams from elsewhere in the globe and a waste of money to purchase for a single race weekend.
In FRegional Americas there are Honda-powered Ligier cars, the Japanese use Alfa Romeo-powered Dome chassis, and in New Zealand a modified Tatuus car runs a 2.0L Toyota engine. Eurocup-3 has identical underpinnings to FREC but with some tweaks, and GB3 has developed a FRegional-level car with Tatuus too. The Kiwis at least can attract the Europeans to race their cars in the 2025 New Zealand Grand Prix next February.
Since the Macau GP has now been awarded the additional status of being the FRegional World Cup, it would be a bold decision to make it so in future by allowing more chassis and engine combinations so motorsport fans (who have been starved of this prospect for years) can watch an international junior single-seater formula race for contemporary machinery that isn’t a spec contest.
The problem is each of these FRegional chassis were designed to be used in spec series, and so across a full grid of cars there would be as little technical disparity as possible. When pitted against other chassis-engine combinations in the category, and excluding the 2.0L Toyota unit and its obvious power advantage, there may be one car that is either faster or slower than the others no matter who is behind the wheel. And if that were the case, the World Cup wouldn’t then be offering the opportunity for the stars of FRegional in Japan to prove they have the talent to match America or Europe’s championships.
Major FRegional races
| Year | Race | Winner (Team) |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | NZ Motor Cup | Liam Lawson (M2 Competition) |
| 2020 | New Zealand GP | Igor Fraga (M2 Competition) |
| 2021 | New Zealand GP | Shane van Gisbergen (M2 Competition) |
| 2023 | Dorothy Smith Memorial Cup | David Morales (M2 Competition) |
| 2023 | New Zealand GP | Laurens van Hoepen (M2 Competition) |
| 2024 | Lady Wigram Trophy | Liam Sceats (M2 Competition) |
| 2024 | New Zealand GP | Liam Sceats (M2 Competition) |
| 2024 | Macau GP | Ugo Ugochukwu (R-ace GP) |