Rob Huff has officially become the first driver to score ten Macau Guia Race victories, however the feature race of the weekend was blighted by multiple heavy crashes.
Questions were raised over whether his qualifying race triumph yesterday counted towards his official win tally, but the record is now assured after the Brit took the chequered flag in today’s main feature race as well.
Huff started from pole position as a result of his performance on Saturday, but just as in the previous race, Ma Qing Hua was the quickest away from the line and went on to take the lead.
In the midfield meanwhile, contact between Kenneth Look and Lin Qi at Lisboa caused a slight traffic jam at the second turn. Thankfully though, the situation was able to resolve itself without the need for marshal assistance.
Heading onto lap two, Huff got a great run through R. Bend and consequently was all over the back of Ma as the cars turned into the high-speed Mandarin corner.
But then, disaster struck as the pace difference between the pair of them resulted in contact as Huff looked to move towards the outside line.
It was only a light hit, but with the cars on the edge of adhesion, Ma’s Lynk & Co was pitched sideways and into the barriers at high velocity.
The force of the impact was enough to render the front of the Lynk & Co unrecognisable as it was spat back out across the track in front of the onrushing pack. Thankfully, Ma was able to get out of the car under his own steam, despite the severity of the crash.
With the stricken Lynk & Co needing to be removed from the circuit, and the affected barriers needing to undergo some repairs, the red flags were waved and the race was suspended.
Nearly an hour later, the race resumed once again with Huff leading the way from Jason Zhang in second place, and Andy Yan in third.
On the restart, Huff pulled away from the chasing pack, while Yan latched onto the back of Zhang’s Lynk & Co in an attempt to make it a 1-2 for MG X-Power.
Behind them, there was more incident as Ryan Wong got it all wrong in his MacPro Racing Honda on entry to Lisboa and made contact with the wall.
His car was recovered quickly, but it wasn’t enough to keep the race from being neutralised again as a lap later there was another heavy crash at Mandarin bend.
Yang Xi lost the rear of his Audi on entry to the fast right-hander, which then pitched him into the inside barriers in similar fashion to Ma.
Then, when Xi’s car span back onto the racing line, it was violently collected by the other Audi of Wu Yi Fan who had no time to react.
Medical teams descended onto the two stricken vehicles, and after a few laps behind the safety car, the race was red-flagged for a second time.
With that, the session would not be resumed, and so Huff would take victory in rather anticlimactic circumstances.
Zhang and Yan would round out the podium in second and third place respectively. It was a particularly impressive result for Yan who hadn’t raced all year, and like Huff, had never even tested the MG before this weekend.
Zhang’s Teamwork Motorsport team-mate Sunny Wong crossed the line in fourth place, 1.8 seconds behind Yan.
Next up was Lo Sze Ho in fifth position for Maximum Racing; the Hong Kong driver had done well all weekend and finished the event as the best-placed fully independent entrant.
Practice One pace-setter Filipe de Souza didn’t quite have such a good time in the races. Nevertheless, the T.A. Motorsport driver finished as the best of the large Audi contingent in sixth place.
The third MG of Zhang Zhen Dong was classified in seventh position, while Eurico de Jesus was a second further back in eighth.
Rodolfo Ávila made remarkable progress to finish ninth after just a handful of green flag laps, having started the race from the very back of the grid. Likewise, Huang Chu Han also made plenty of progress to end the weekend in tenth.