KCMG by Pinnacle Motorsport’s Théophile Naël took pole position for the FIA Formula Regional World Cup qualifying race for the Macau Grand Prix on Saturday ahead of Theodore Prema Racing’s Freddie Slater. Feeder Series reviews the events on Thursday and Friday of the FR World Cup. 

By Michael McClure

Naël’s 2:15.609 in the qualifying session at the Guia Circuit on Friday gave him pole position for Saturday’s race, the grid for which is set by each driver’s best time from either Thursday’s or Friday’s qualifying session. Slater, who set his best time of 2:15.708 on Thursday, was second, while Evan Giltaire rounded out the top three and will start on the second row next to teammate Taito Kato.

ART Grand Prix’s Kato set the fastest time of the first practice session on Thursday with a 2:16.412, a time only 0.044 seconds faster than Slater’s. Mari Boya rounded out the top three of the session with a 2:16.583. The sole red flag of the session came out 13 minutes into the 40-minute session when Hiyu Yamakoshi’s left-rear wheel fell off.

When drivers headed  back out on track, only 19 minutes remained. Kato’s best time of 2:16.412, which he set with three minutes left on the clock, was 0.044s faster than Slater’s final attempt at the flag. 

Kato had set the fastest time in sector three on his own final flyer, but the Honda junior had to bail on the lap after brushing the wall and damaging the suspension of his car. Naël set the fourth-fastest time with a 2:16.671, while Enzo Deligny finished fifth. 

Deligny, helped by R-ace GP’s position as the first team in the pit lane, was the first driver to set a flying lap in qualifying one with a 2:19.990, followed by teammates Jin Nakamura and Matteo De Palo. He improved to a 2:17.900 on his next attempt and remained unbeaten until Slater went a second faster with 29:30 remaining.

Slater’s next best attempt was a 2:16.321, putting him 0.581s clear of the pursuing Naël. Boya got closer with a 2:16.719 before Deligny on a 2:16.297 and then Naël on a 2:16.253 took over the top spot just before the session’s halfway point.

At that point everyone pitted, and all cars returned to the circuit with 15 minutes remaining except Yamakoshi. The Evans GP driver’s mechanics made set-up tweaks to the front and rear wings of his car, and he went out of pit lane with 11 minutes remaining – but promptly stuffed it in the barrier at Lisboa, bringing out the first red flag of the session.

TOM’S Formula’s Yuki Sano also appeared to have hit the wall during his run, coming back to pit lane with minor damage to his left-front suspension.

Just before the red flag, Slater had set a 2:16.132 to retake the top spot. He looked set to improve on his next flying lap, but the session was halted again with 5:23 remaining thanks to a crash for Reza Seewooruthun at Turn 14 as the Prema driver was in the final sector. Charlie Wurz stopped in that sector at the same time.

Deligny’s spot in pit lane gave him a veritable advantage that time, and he crossed the line mere seconds before the red flag was thrown. His time, a 2:16.016, looked good enough for provisional pole as the session neared its end.

Slater, however, had more in the tank and went even quicker, setting a 2:15.708 after the chequered flag fell. Boya jumped to third on a 1:26.029, with Naël and Matteo De Palo – who experienced gearbox issues after the mid-session tyre change and missed the final 13 minutes – rounding out the top five in the first session.

Van Amersfoort’s Kiyoshi Umegaki crashed at Dona Maria on his final lap, bringing out the full-course yellows. Having made a mistake in sector four on his first flying lap, Deligny crossed the line just in time to get another attempt but had to abandon the lap as a result of Umegaki’s accident.

The number of drivers competing in qualifying two dropped by two – functionally three – following the second practice session on Friday morning, which was interrupted by three red flags.

The first was for Kanato Le, who hit the wall at Faraway Hill eight and a half minutes into the session. Oscar Wurz then smacked the barrier at Fisherman’s Bend with 19 minutes remaining, and Chi Zhenrui crashed more spectacularly at the same spot with a minute and a half remaining.

Several drivers – primarily those who focused on practice starts – did not get a chance to set fastest laps. That group included eventual polesitter Naël, though Boya put the other Pinnacle Motorsport car second behind Slater and one position ahead of Deligny.

Once again, Deligny used track position to his advantage to set the first flying lap in qualifying two, a 2:18.016. It was quickly bested by Naël, who was then usurped by Slater before retaking the top spot with a 2:17.006.

The red flag then came out 12 minutes in for PHM Racing’s José Garfias, who crashed at the Solitude Esses.

The stop-start nature of the running across the weekend had shown the importance of track position for completing laps. Boya, who was fourth in the order on pit lane, charged to the front of the queue on his outlap after the red flag and began pushing. He improved to a 2:17.142 on his first lap but aborted his second, which was likely to have been faster.

PHM Racing’s Mattia Colnaghi was ultimately the one to overhaul Naël with a 2:16.783, with Giltaire following 0.221s behind. A second red flag for Tymek Kucharczyk’s incident at the Solitude Esses cut short that round of flying laps.

The session resumed with 18:37 remaining as cars peeled out onto the track. Deligny out front lowered the benchmark to a 2:16.611 at the first opportunity, but further improvements were again throttled after Charlie Wurz crashed at Turn 7.

As the schedule kept sliding – qualifying two was now due to end about 48 minutes later than planned – the desperation skyrocketed. Slater’s pacesetting time from Thursday was still nine tenths away, and the hot weather and frequency of red flags had kept the times from tumbling significantly.

Luckily for drivers, there were no further interruptions, and cooler weather hit the track in the final few minutes. Naël surged to first with a 2:15.977, followed by Kato on a 2:16.489. With 4:38 remaining, Deligny went even faster with a 2:15.959 before Naël put himself on provisional pole with a 2:15.609.

“For me, it was [important] to keep the position on track, keep the gap to the car ahead, trying to manage that as better as possible,” Naël told Feeder Series in the post-qualifying press conference on Friday. “I think it worked well for us. Obviously with Mari, my teammate, we were strong for the whole weekend, so we can push each other well on track. To find the gap was quite easy.”

Slater jumped to second with a 2:15.876, but it was not enough to beat Naël or his own time from qualifying one. Giltaire and Kato also breached the 2m16s barrier, finishing third and fourth respectively as Deligny rounded out the top five in both the session and on the overall grid.

Slater, like Naël, has a year of experience in FR machinery at the Guia Circuit, but when he raced here in 2024, it was his first outing in this machinery. How has the extra familiarity helped him, if at all?

“It’s quite a tough one, to be honest, because there’s not actually tracks that actually relate to this one,” he told Feeder Series in Thursday’s press conference. “When I was here last year, I think the pace was pretty decent, but still as a rookie, there were a few inconsistent moments – also lot of misfortune, which is normal. Sometimes it goes your way, and sometimes it doesn’t.”

Slater has since competed in both FR Middle East and FR Europe, finishing as the runner-up in the former with four wins before taking the title in the latter with eight wins and four further podiums.

With this extra experience, Slater said, “I understand the car a lot more, how it should feel, how it should dance around the corners, and trying to push as hard as I can without crashing. I’m able to extract more towards that limit considering what I could have probably done last year.”

As for managing the session, Slater and his Theodore Prema Racing teammates were ‘just kind of in the middle’ when it comes to traffic, as he put it to Feeder Series. While the likes of Naël only had a few cars ahead of them, Giltaire, Kato and others with car numbers in the twenties faced much more traffic from further back in the queue.

“I wish I could have finished more laps than I started,” Slater said. “[I] found many cars in sector four multiple laps in a row, especially when the fuel is low at the end of the run, so [it’s] a bit unfortunate, but we’re still going off the front row. We know we have the pace, so it’s full sending into tomorrow’s race and then get ourselves up the front for the main race.”

The FR World Cup qualifying race takes place at 16:15 local Saturday.

Additional reporting by Kaylene Lau

Header photo credit: Macau Grand Prix Organizing Committee