MACAU GRAND PRIX 2000

Deutsche Bank Private Banking Supercar Challenge

Qualifying Report
Unusually rain seemed a possibility for this year’s Macau Grand Prix. Indeed for the first Formula 3 session on Thursday morning the track was wet. This gave some hope to those driving Renault Spiders in the Deutsche Bank Private Banking Supercar Challenge: with considerably less power than the Porsches in their race only a class victory would be possible in the dry.

Matthew Marsh set the class pace from the beginning of the session and when the red flag came out after 20 minutes of running he was seven seconds ahead of the next Spider and sixth overall on the grid. There was some confusion about whether the session would continue or not and when it did Matthew lost three places overall but remained quickest of the Renaults – by three seconds.

“I was surprised to be so quick and took advice from [F3 team boss] Trevor Carlin to spend the remaining minutes working out where I could be quicker in the race. The Mandarin Bend feels like it could be flat… but I kept whimping out.”

Pole position was taken by Kevin Wong in Porsche GT3R. Alongside him was Dick Lau in a 933 RSR. Philip Ma, in another GT3R, was third.

Race Report

The nine o’clock race start time meant an early Saturday night for the drivers. For their friends it would mean only that noisy racing cars would be unwelcome and that sunglasses would be required. Tequila was, apparently, the choice tipple.

From ninth on the grid Matthew Marsh knew that the start would be critical: “if I can get ahead of them before Lisboa [ turn 3 at the end of a long high-speed drag from the start-line ] then perhaps I can get enough of a gap through the twisty stuff at the back to keep them behind then next time we hit the straight.”

Given that Kevin Wong’s pole-setting time was over seven seconds faster than Matthew’s qualifying pace this comment might seem overly optimistic.

Which is also another way of describing his braking into Lisboa.

“My start was quite good and I was flat through the first two turns which put me about seventh and in the slipstream from Samson Chan’s Porsche. It all looked good under braking until the fourth-to-third gear change when I began to run out of road. I hit the wall quite hard.”

Luckily for Marsh another incident at the next corner caused the race to be red-flagged. He made it back to the grid with the front of the car hanging off and water leaking from the damaged radiator.

“The team did a great job. I think at first they didn’t believe it could be done in time but David Sonenscher came over from the pits and encouraged them.”

An unexpected side-effect of this activity on the grid was the hi-jacking of most of the television coverage during the delayed start. “It gave us plenty to talk about”, said race commentator Rupert Lloyd-Thomas, “the sight of the marshals emptying their drinks bottles into his water tank was marvellous!”

Marsh was more cautious at the restart which is more than can be said for pole-man Kevin Wong. “The revs were perfect and I knew it would be a great start so I just went”, said Wong who received a thirty seconds penalty.

On the last lap of the shortened eight lap race Marsh – with a 32 second lead over Kenneth Ma in the next Spider – began to catch Samson Chan who was suffering with throttle problems on his Porsche. As they went through the twisty mountain section of the circuit Marsh tried to squeeze around Chan’s Porsche and finally made it around the outside at the Dona Maria bend. On the exit they touched heavily causing Marsh’s front tyre to deflate. At the next turn – the famous Melco Hairpin – Marsh, now without much in the way of control of his speed or direction, ran into the back of Chan’s Porsche destroying the front of his car – again.

It was a race to the line and Kenneth Ma finally took the lead of the Spider class before the last corner.

“It was a great race,” said Marsh afterwards. “Winning the class did not mean much to me, I wanted to run flat out – which I did.”

Wong's jump-start penalty handed victory to Philip Ma from Adrian Fu and Dick Lau

The crowd, thrilled by the action and in particular the destruction of fibre glass panels and water-cooling systems, cheered Marsh as he walked back to the pits from his abandoned car.

{Action photographs by Ian Mar)