Théophile Naël was third, staring at the rear wing of Mari Boya and Enzo Deligny, with two laps to go in the 72nd Macau Grand Prix – but an opportunistic double overtake on the run to Lisboa and a well-timed safety car secured him the victory in the Formula Regional World Cup. Feeder Series reviews an action-packed 15-lap contest with input from the top five finishers.

By Michael McClure and Kaylene Lau

KCMG by Pinnacle Motorsport’s Naël came to Macau off the back of a promising rookie season in F3 in which he finished eighth. But while he showed off his one-lap pace by taking pole position in qualifying on Friday, he achieved his most important single-seater victory yet not via raw speed but via opportunism

“I just stayed patient, stayed calm, and I think it paid off. I was aggressive when I should be, like in the two last laps,” he told Feeder Series in the paddock. “The whole team deserved that win. That’s the biggest success for them and as well for me. I hope the best is to come, but it’s a really good way to end up 2025.”

Freddie Slater had pole position for the main race at the Guia Circuit on Sunday after a commanding performance in Saturday’s qualifying race to win by 5.171 seconds. But while qualifying race polesitter Naël was the big loser on Saturday, Slater lost out on Sunday. He angled his car towards the outside wall and got a suboptimal start, falling behind fellow front-row starter Boya at the opening corner.

Even then, Naël showcased the bravery that would later win him the race. The 18-year-old went on the inside at Mandarin and planted his car on the inside on the run to Lisboa. Slater squeezed him to the wall, forcing Naël to back out and costing the Frenchman a position to R-ace GP’s Deligny.

Still, Slater was clearly not content with second place, even drawing alongside Boya on the run to Turn 7 in the circuit’s twistiest section on the opening lap. 

The field made it through Lisboa without incident, but they were not so lucky going through San Francisco. Kiyoshi Umegaki tapped the rear of Charlie Wurz’s Evans GP car, sending him spinning. Reza Seewooruthun, Enzo Yeh and Newman Chi were also caught in the pile-up. Yeh and Wurz continued, albeit at the back of the field. The incident was investigated, but no decision had been released at the time of publication.

“I came through Turn 4 and there was a car sideways across the circuit,” Seewooruthun explained to Feeder Series afterwards. “I had someone on my inside because they had got on the brakes and tried to go on their outside, and then the car reversed backwards across, so I didn’t really have anywhere to go. And then I got hit as well.”

At the restart at the end of lap three, Boya defended vigorously against Slater, but the Theodore Prema Racing driver used the slipstream to retake the lead on the outside exiting Mandarin and cleared his rival by the time they reached the braking zone at Lisboa.

As Slater began to pull away, Deligny had to defend from Naël, who attempted a move on the outside at Lisboa several times. He ended up on the dirty line the second time on lap five, coming within centimetres of tapping the wall with his rear-left tyre and bringing a premature conclusion to his afternoon.

By the race’s halfway point on lap eight, as Naël made another attempt at the inside of Lisboa and locked up, Slater had pulled a gap of about three seconds over Boya, who had a similar gap over Deligny in third. At this point Slater’s biggest challenge would have been bringing his Tatuus F3-T318 home in one piece, but Oscar Wurz’s crash at Lisboa on lap nine brought out the safety car and bunched up the pack once more.

The race restarted at the end of the next lap, and Boya was right on the back of Slater. As the Briton swerved to try to break the tow, the Spaniard went to the outside and replicated the move Slater used to take the lead on the previous restart.

Slater still seemed quicker, especially through sector two, and there remained four more laps for him to retake the lead. But just when victory still seemed well within reach, he ran wide at R Bend, smashing the wall and destroying his rear wing and suspension. With Slater’s car stranded and the 17-year-old out of the race, Boya had a much clearer path to victory.

Behind Boya, Deligny was aggressively defending from Naël before the safety car was brought out to retrieve Slater’s car on lap 12.

At the safety car restart at the end of lap 13, Boya tried to fend off Deligny, but Naël made a daring move around the outside heading into Lisboa to overtake both drivers and take the race lead.

Just as he lined up the move, Charles Leong made contact with Tokiya Suzuki entering Mandarin Bend and crashed into the barrier on the outside. His car crawled to a stop on the circuit with suspension damage, while Suzuki made it to the escape road. That incident, along with contact between Rashid Al Dhaheri and Jin Nakamura, brought out the safety car and all but assured that Naël would secure victory.

Naël’s victory follows that of Frenchman Jules Roussel in this morning’s F4 World Cup race in what was a banner day for French motorsport. It also made him the first French winner of the Macau Grand Prix since 2004, three years before he was born, when Alexandre Prémat triumphed for ART Grand Prix precursor ASM.

“I’m really proud of that,” he added. “We did it, and now it’s onto 2026.”

The main race of the FR World Cup was the last race of the day, meaning that there was the maximum amount of rubber down on the track all day. 

“For me, that was not ideal. I had to manage the tyres as well quite well, so for me, I kept that in mind to control my approach to have still some pace with the tyres at the end of the race,” Naël told Feeder Series in the post-race press conference. “But from what I saw from yesterday’s race, the degradation was not that much, so for me it was possible to push until the end.”

Boya noted that the hotter air and track temperature contributed the most to tyre behaviour in the race.

“We are on a street track and we know always there is a line that you will need to follow,” he said. “For me, the most different thing from yesterday is the hot temperature that we had.” 

Deligny finished fourth last year as the event’s top rookie. While he had a shot at victory this year, third place was still satisfactory.

“Last year, I finished P4, but it was mainly just by surviving. A lot of the quick guys crashed as well,” he told Feeder Series. “In the second year, you come back with a lot of confidence, where the walls are. You’re able to push more the sketchy parts. This year overall, we were a lot quicker. Quali didn’t really go our way, but in the end we were definitely better than last year.”

Mattia Colnaghi finished fourth after having started seventh. He told Feeder Series that after a strong getaway off the line, he ‘lifted a bit earlier and went flat through T2 to get a good run on the guys in front’. With the advantage of that slipstream, he passed ART Grand Prix teammates Evan Giltaire and Taito Kato before gaining fourth place when Slater crashed.

“It’s a bit annoying to be one step off the podium and so close as well to Enzo,” he said. “The car was really good – especially sector two, sector three, and the last sector was very nice. We were quick all weekend. [It was] a same a bit for the position so far back in the pit lane. I think that compromised our weekend a little bit in qualifying, but it is what it is. I’m happy to be at Macau again.”

Colnaghi normally competes in Eurocup-3 with MP Motorsport, winning the championship title two months ago in Jerez. With that unassailable 71-point advantage, he elected to skip the season finale in Barcelona this weekend to race in Macau with PHM Racing, marking the first time in his single-seater career that he has raced outside of MP.

“It was a long story, to be honest,” he explained. “Winning in Jerez was quite late in the first spot, but we found spot in PHM. They were willing to give me the spot, and judging by their Middle East results, especially this year with Brando [Badoer, who finished fourth], they looked decent, quite strong. We just tried to go for them, and I think in the end it paid off.”

Kato finished fifth as the best rookie despite saying that he was ‘missing quite a lot of pace’, while teammate Giltaire slid down to sixth after starting fourth.

Noah Strømsted finished seventh as the lead Trident driver, with R-ace GP’s Matteo De Palo – Slater’s main rival for the crown in FR Europe – coming home eighth. Toyota junior Yuki Sano of TOM’S and PHM’s José Garfias completed the top 10.

The biggest mover on Sunday was Tymek Kucharczyk, who was the sole Van Amersfoort Racing car to finish the race. The Pole stayed out of trouble and finished 13th after starting 24th, though he conceded that ‘the preparation probably wasn’t the most amazing’ and that he ‘wanted to achieve much more’.

In what is believed to be Saintéloc Racing’s final race weekend in single-seaters for the time being, James Egozi finished 14th, while Owen Tangavelou – who is himself retiring from racing to concentrate on university studies – came home 17th after stalling on the formation lap.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency