How two restarts set up the biggest day in Pinnacle Motorsport’s history

Photos: Macau GP Organising Committee

Pinnacle Motorsport had the pace to win in Macau, but it needed more than that for its 1-2 in the grand prix

There was mixed feelings on the podium of last Sunday’s Macau Grand Prix, as Pinnacle Motorsport’s drivers received their wreaths, trophies and were then interviewed after finishing one-two. Mari Boya had driven a tactile race which earned him the lead twice, but came home runner-up to Theophile Nael who “was not breathing” through the last lap after getting to the front.

He had taken first place through a move that “was 100% determination” after a restart on the penultimate lap, flying past Boya and R-ace GP’s Enzo Deligny down the straight following Mandarin corner.

“I was just full throttle, six gears, and I was looking to the front. I brake late, and it paid off,” Nael said of the overtake.

He later added a key detail when talking to media, saying “I don’t know why they slowed down a bit too much” ahead.

Boya had led the field back to racing speeds heading into lap 14 of 15, and weaved his way down the straights between the first two corners with his eye always on his left mirror. Deligny took a tighter line into the high-speed Mandarin right-hander, but was too close to Boya’s gearbox after the apex to have room to go either side of him so he had to check up.

The pair had two car lengths in hand over Nael entering Mandarin, but he was on their tail exiting it and Boya’s decision to jink right then to cover the inside to prevent Deligny from taking it left Nael plenty of room to get past both on the outside.

Once ahead of Boya he moved to the right, then Boya tucked in behind as the track tightened so Nael had the inside line for braking into Lisboa. Had Nael been closer into Mandarin, he would have been compromised the same way Deligny was.

While Nael credited that he and Boya had “worked really well together the whole weekend”, to concede the lead — and ultimately victory — to his team-mate was clearly not Boya’s plan.

Mari Boya

“I’m not happy,” was Boya’s first reaction once out of the cockpit. “The slipstream, I don’t understand how it’s so powerful. I was stuck on the straight, so couldn’t do anything. This is racing.”

He later added “maybe tomorrow I will be happier than today” and ” when I will look at the past I will be really happy and proud about this week”, but was frank about his disappointment at the final restart not going to plan.

“I knew I will lead the race after T2. Like I had in mind, I [was] 100% sure if there was a safety car the one that will be in front [would be] me. I looked at thousands of possibilities to restart, and the one that was [resulting in] every time the best was this one,” he explained of his choice to instigate the restart before R bend, weave to Mandarin and then tuck inside.

“Ugo [Ugochukwu, 2024 winner] last year was amazing doing this. [Pirelli] changed the compound, it’s much easier to have the tyre ready and it’s harder to make the difference. So for me it was the best one, the best place to do it. Freddie [Slater] also, I think he knew it was there.

“And in the last one [restart], yeah, nothing more to do. Just waiting for a car to overtake you. You can brake in the middle of the straight, but it’s not fair. This is Macau.”

While that answer suggested he was against the idea of lifting on a straight to slow a driver behind, in comments made to one outlet he claimed “I know how to play my game, and I feel Fernando [Alonso] is the best one doing this type of thing.”

Deligny’s take on the restart was that Boya had lost speed as a tactical decision.

“I made sure to not be too close heading into Mandarin, to not have to brake too early. I tried to manage the gap perfectly, but for some reason he decided to slow down in the middle of the corner, which meant I had to brake as well,” he said.

Fastest laps

Boya’s approach had not only been influenced by watching previous races and Alonso, a driver for the Aston Martin Formula 1 team which now backs Boya’s career, but by restarts and the pace earlier in the race when victory looked far harder to take.

Prema’s Freddie Slater had started on pole after winning the qualification race the previous day, but lost the lead to Boya into the opening corner. The safety car made its first appearance shortly after, and on the race’s first restart Boya weaved his way down the first straights, Slater looked to his outside after Mandarin and as soon as he was fully ahead cut to the inside.

It was a clinical pass, and Slater then built a three-second lead with a pace 0.66 seconds faster than Boya’s before the safety car returned. The subsequent restart was a repeat of the first but with the roles reversed, and when pushing to stay with the leader Slater then crashed at R bend which led to a third safety car period and then the restart which Boya lost the race on.

“I feel I did everything I could. Freddie today was really, really strong. I pushed so, so hard at the beginning to try to catch him,” Boya said of his earlier rival for victory.

“He was with new tyres so it was super hard for me to stay with him. So when I realised I couldn’t follow him, I started to not push, think on [saving] tyres to — if there was a safety car or something — have a revenge.”

While in disbelief at how the slipstream effect eradicated his lead so quickly in sector one, Boya was in praise of Slater’s style.

“He was taking many risks, but he was driving really, really good. I felt he had a lot of confidence today. I saw in the first restart that the slipstream was super powerful. I felt I did a really good job in my first one, and he overtook me super easy.”

Boya added: “[Slater] was incredibly fast in the last two corners [on the restarts], but the slipstream is so powerful that I was able to arrive, risk it a lot on the braking, was moving everything, locking front, rear. I knew that I wanted to win here. It doesn’t matter making P2. The one that is remembered is in P1. And I knew that it was my chance to get past Freddie.

Slater’s crash

“Then he make a mistake in the last corner, and I felt it was for me because I knew I had a gap. But, again safety car, one-lap race, ciao. I tried to do whatever in the last two corners, but it’s too powerful the slipstream.”

There was also plenty of praise for Nael’s drive. He had lost third place to Deligny at the start, and had been pressuring him when Slater and Boya were battling ahead in what the winner described as a “patient” race.

“Both starts, yesterday and today, didn’t went as planned so I just managed to stay calm. I know that we are racing in Macau so everything can happen. Until the chequered flag it’s not over, so I was patient.”

Nael credited Pinnacle as “the car was just flying, the pace was there the whole weekend”, and like Boya was saving his rubber on a hot track once Slater had stormed ahead. But as shown with his storming drive in the shorter qualification race, he actually had a grippier car than his rivals late on.

“I had to manage the tyres as well,” he admitted. “So I kept that in mind. To not overpush, to have still some pace in the tyres at the end of the race. But what I saw from yesterday’s race, the tyre degradation was not that much, so for me it was possible to push until the end.”

Grip matters in the twisty mountain section as much as the straights, most importantly helping drivers avoid the barriers. Confidence through those corners has a big impact on laptime, and can help drivers create gaps that minimise the slipstream effect to cars behind once they get through the Guia Circuit’s five sectors and back to the straights.

“Obviously there’s a lot of simulations done before the event. And we know Macau is notoriously difficult to overtake on,” Pinnacle’s team director John O’Hara said when asked about what had underpinned his team’s excellent weekend.

“Into Lisboa on lap one is your best chance, and on the safety car restarts. So of course that was a factor for us.

1-2 finishes at the Macau GP