Macau Grand Prix 2002

MANY TROUBLES AND ONE WINNER

Tristan Gommendy wins turbulent race on Guia Circuit

Tristan Gommendy is the winner of the 49th Macau Grand Prix. The 22 years old Frenchman won in his Dallara Renault Sodemo 302 with a gap of 2.104 seconds. After being only 14th in last year´s Macau Grand Prix on the very demanding circuit in the former Portuguese colony near Hongkong, this time he had a real great success. Gommendy was very excited after his triumph. He considered his win a very important one, but he was not able to say, if that is a step forward bringing him into Formula 1. Gommendy was very proud of being now on the same list of former Macau Grand Prix winners such as Michael Schumacher, David Coulthard or Takuma Sato.

After the reigning French Formula 3 champion Heikki Kovalainen, also driving a Dallara Renault 302, came home second place. The Finn also competed for the second time in the Macau Grand Prix as the third place man overall in the British Formula 3 championship. Kovalainen had been a little bit confused by the safety car periods. After the re-start in lap 11 he had not been able to follow Gommendy, who had been in his direct slip-stream making him faster, when braking for the 90° Lisboa curve at high speed. The 21 years old Finnish driver clearly had the victory in front of his eyes with only 4 laps to go.

Japanese Formula 3 champion Takashi Kogure in a Dallara Mugen Honda 302 finished third position. The 22 years old Japanese was 3.098 seconds behind to be very lucky: Being only 11th on the grid to come to a podium finish, that is only possible in Macau.

Once again the race was influenced by many troubles, spins and several mass crashes. Very early in lap one a big shunt happened. In the infamous Lisboa bend, the drivers have to brake for at a speed of 260 km/h, France´s Bruce Jouanny caused the first safety car action. At that time the winner of the qualifying race, Paolo Montin, had done everything not to succeed. At the start the Frenchman had stalled his engine to begin hunting the field from behind. After the start Kovalainen had been in the lead ahead of Japanese Yuje Ide followed by Tristan Gommendy, Narain Karthikeyan and German vice champion Kousuke Matsuura from the Prema Powerteam. After the re-start in lap 3 Karthikeyan was too fast in the uptown very narrow part of the circuit and crashed into the wall. The Indian was considered doing a lot at his fifth start in Macau. In lap 8 Gommendy dared an attractive attack on Ide: In the very fast Mandarin curve the Frenchman sat beside the Japanese at about 250 km/h to take over second position at the end of the straight. That had been the basis for his win later. One lap after that, once again an accident happened. This time between Matsuura and Ide, who nearly forced the German vice champion into the armco barrier at his attack. Matsuura had come onto the dirty part of the track, then he had touched the barrier in Lisboa to spin a little later and then bump in the the harbour´s wall. Matsuura was not sure, if he had touched the barrier of the Lisboa bend. But after that moment the handling of the car, that been excellent before, became bad. Matsuura had not wanted to go for third place, but fight for victory instead, in spite of coming home only 6th position in race one. There he had got a problem in the Fishermen´s curve. For the main race Matsuura had changed the set up of his car lying on a promising position, when he met Ide. At the re-start Gommendy took his chance to stay in the lead for the race´s last three laps without any danger from the drivers behind him.

No German driver was at the start of the 49th Macau Grand Prix. The last German winner of the Formula 3 race with the greatest prestige, that makes the best drivers of this category competing in each year´s November, had been Ralf Schumacher back in 1995 with Joerg Mueller (1993) and Sascha Maassen (1994) as his predecessors. For 2003 there will be great celebrations for the 50th Macau Grand Prix. All former winners will be invented and at the weekend before the Grand Prix there will be a race with historic cars.

J H / www.formel3.com

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