The annual Macau Grand Prix always produces spectacular action, with the challenging Guia track offering big overtaking opportunities but no room for errors.
This year’s event did not disappoint, with some thrilling racing action and a grand prix that was swung totally on its head by a third-to-first pass, in what would be the final proper lap, which won it for Frenchman Theo Neal.
Here is everything we learned from the Macau Grand Prix weekend.
Macau does not always reward the fastest
Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton, Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc all well know that being fast at Macau does not guarantee a win.
Macau’s history is full of stories of super-fast favourites seeing their victory hopes extinguished in the blink of an eye through one small error, a badly timed safety car or being caught up in other people’s accidents.
A lot of 'uncontrollables' get thrown into the mix, ready to derail even the fastest of stars.
This year was Freddie Slater’s turn, with the Formula Regional European Championship title winner (the Macau Grand Prix uses the same cars) appearing to have had everything under control well past the halfway point of the Grand Prix.
He had dominated the qualification race and, after retaking the lead in the main race, he had checked out – holding a three second advantage over Mari Boya by lap nine of 15.
Watch the whole race here:
But a safety car intervention after Alex Wurz's son Oscar crashed wiped away Slater’s lead and left him exposed before being passed by Boya at the restart on lap 11.
As Slater made an extra push to get into Boya’s slipstream for the start of the following lap, a tiny mistake put him wide at the final R Bend corner. He swiped the wall and victory was gone.
But while the end result was not there, Slater - who has been linked to being an Audi F1 junior in the future - says there were few regrets on a weekend when he had showed how fast he was.
“The pace has been incredible,” he said. “I'd been flirting with the walls and dancing so well on the limit without going over it. I think I'm actually quite proud of myself, the way I've driven.
“There were a couple of times where people think you need to back off and save, and I went, ‘No, I need to learn, I need to push’.
"So I think it's been a great learning weekend for myself.”
Alonso tactic couldn't save the win for Boya – but he would still have lost without it
Boya looked to be in control of the race following Slater’s exit, as he seemed to have a pace edge over Enzo Deligny and Nael behind him.
But the subsequent safety car to clear Slater's car gave Deligny the opportunity to get in Boya's slipstream – and the then leader knew that he had to do something extra to stop his R-ace GP rival shooting past him.
Boya did what he labelled as a Fernando Alonso-style tactic of becoming a disruptor by lifting off early for Mandarin in the hope that Deligny would have to slow more behind him and lose all his momentum.
The tactic worked in keeping Deligny back, but what Boya has not accounted for was that Nael in third was further back than anticipated – so wasn’t impacted by his lifting tactic.
Reflecting on it afterwards, Boya said: “I have experience. I know how to play my game, and I feel Fernando is the best one doing this type of thing.”
Boya’s game ultimately cost him the win to Nael, but he reckons that without it he would have lost to Deligny. So he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't.
This was all as a result of the slipstream being so powerful at restarts this year. More on that later.
Nael's out of the blue winning move
Nael had resigned himself to not even finishing on the podium in the opening half of the Grand Prix, with Slater and Boya clear in front and him unable to find a way past third placed Deligny.
Slater’s exit on lap 11 suddenly got him to third, and the subsequent safety car delivered him the completely unexpected opportunity that helped him win.
Nael found himself in the right place at the right time as Boya played his 'Alonso games' with Deligny to stop him drafting past.
As the two front cars scrubbed off speed, Nael had a perfect gap to the duo to be able to keep his foot in and that helped slingshot him from third to first in an instant.
With crashes further back, the safety car came out leaving Boya with no chance to respond and get back at Nael before the chequered flag.
Improved tyres left the leaders exposed
The slipstream proved to be super-powerful in the Macau Grand Prix, as getting to less than half a second behind the car ahead out of the final corner was enough to get a tow that would open up an overtaking opportunity at Lisboa.
This meant that the race leader was always going to be exposed at any restart, as there was no real opportunity to build any kind of buffer to the following cars before the line.
This year, though, things were made even worse for the race leader because of an improvement that Pirelli had made to its tyres.
Warm-up was much better than it was in the past, and that made it much easier to get the rubber fired up at the safety car restarts – so it was easier to stay close to other cars through the final corners.
This factor almost certainly played a part in every restart having the leader pounced upon and losing out.
A 230km/h Mandarin pass was the move of the weekend
While some of the overtakes in the Macau Grand Prix were quite spectacular – especially Boya’s lap 11 pass of Slater – there is no doubt who pulled off the overtake of the weekend.
That was Italian Emanuele Olivieri, the godson of three-times Le Mans 24 Hours winner Dindo Capello, who produced a breathtaking overtake to snatch the race lead in the Formula 4 World Cup qualification race.
Starting third, the Italian had moved past Kean Nakamura-Berta off the line and then tucked into the slipstream of pole position man Sebastian Wheldon - son of IndyCar legend Dan - through Turn 1.
That gave him the speed boost to pull alongside Wheldon down to Mandarin and, at 230km/h, he elected to hang on around the outside – swooping into the lead despite a small slide and correction leaving him oh so close to the wall on the exit.
Reflecting on it afterwards, Olivieri, who won that race and finished second to Jules Roussel in the main event on Sunday, said that being inch perfect was more by accident than design.
“I thought T2 was easily flat, even around the outside,” he said. “But I ended up quite close to the wall! So it was quite a risky move.”
Ferrari added another big victory in barren F1 year
There seems to be something ironic that, in a year where Ferrari’s Formula 1 team has not even won a grand prix, its other racing activities are hitting new highs.
Just one week on from Ferrari capturing the World Endurance Championship title in Bahrain – with a "unity" that chairman John Elkann suggests is lacking at its grand prix team – it has won itself another important piece of silverware.
F1 development driver and WEC regular Antonio Fuoco triumphed in the Macau GT Cup to secure both his and Ferrari’s first ever triumph in the event, which manufacturers view as an important showpiece for the Asian market.
For Fuoco, who drove in F1 Friday practice for Ferrari at the Mexican Grand Prix, also laid to rest the ghost of last year where his victory hopes were derailed when he was shunted out of the lead with a cheeky tap from behind.
Ferrari’s latest triumph will almost certainly be on Elkann’s radar, and creates another contrast with how his F1 team is not delivering the results it should be.
