Ugo Ugochukwu wins the qualifying race in Macau

The Macau Grand Prix is ​​considered one of the most prestigious youth series competitions, and this year marks the 71st time that the race will be held on the very difficult 6.1km city circuit.

We talked about the fact that 27 representatives from 15 countries will be at the start in Macau, but also about the format of these competitions. The qualifying race, which determines the starting order for tomorrow’s Grand Prix, took place on Saturday and was won by 17-year-old American Hugo Ugochukwu.

In 2024 he makes his debut in Formula 3 as part of the Italian team Prema, with which he has been working since 2022, and went through several youth championships with them, although last season, while participating in the European Formula Regional, he only finished 11th in the personal competition, but still won one race.

Now he has added a few more important achievements to his track record: in today’s race Hugo started from pole and won. However, it happened according to a strange scenario.

The task for all participants of the Macau Grand Prix is ​​seriously complicated by the weather: yesterday it rained, and today it also started intermittently, leaving certain parts of the track wet. Yet everyone started on slicks.

This weekend, with the support of Prema, Ugochukwu is competing for the French team R-ace GP (Oscar Piastri once worked with them by the way) and he started off quite confidently, but Oliver Goethe (MP Motorsport) immediately started pushing him.

Already on the first lap, the cars of the Japanese Sota Ogawa (TGM Grand Prix) and the Finn Tuuki Taponen, Ugochukwu’s R-ace partner, collided and the safety car entered the track.

A restart followed on the third lap and Ugochukwu again acted confidently, escaping quite quickly by more than a second from Goethe. But by the fifth lap Goethe had closed the gap to 0.757 seconds, and Hugo had to hold off his attack at the Lisboa corner.

On the sixth lap the race was neutralized again due to another incident, but at that point the rain became heavier, so after one lap the management of the Macau Grand Prix decided to put up red flags.

The break, during which all cars were in the pit lane, lasted 14 minutes and not all teams were in a hurry to put rain tires on their cars, but the race management decided that this had to be done.

By the time the race was stopped, the competitors had completed seven laps and there were three more to go to the finish. After the restart, the peloton remained behind the safety car for all three laps, as there was too much water in some parts of the lap.

Ugo Ugochukwu was assured of victory, Oliver Goethe – 2nd place, Noel Leon (KCMG by Pinnacle) completed the top three, Freddie Slater (Prema) will also start from the second row tomorrow.

Qualifying race results