The Macau Grand Prix Guia Race will celebrate its 49th edition this year. When the Automóvel Clube de Portugal and the Hong Kong Automobile Association decided to introduce this race for Touring cars in 1972, they were certainly far from imagining that after almost half a century this would be the stage for the biggest sporting confrontation between Chinese car manufacturers on an international stage until the date. This circumstance was only possible due to the resilience of Macau driver Rodolfo Ávila.
In the four races of the double journey of the past weekend at the Jiangsu Wantrack International Circuit, Ávila won the second race and finished on the podium in the remaining ones, a performance that at the beginning of the year would be hardly plausible given the lack of evolution of the MG 6 XPower TCR. Ávila still had a scare in the third race, where a carambola, in which she was innocent, almost caused her to give up. Who gave up in that accident was favorite Ma Qing Hua, who leads the driver’s championship accounts and won the first clash.
In an unfamiliar track, Ávila recovered 22 points from Ma Qing Hua, while 36 points are still at stake in two races at the Guia Circuit. The former Formula 1 test driver’s advantage over the 2015 TCR Asia runner-up could be even less, but for reasons that only MG XPower Racing will be able to explain, Ávila did not have the “green light” to overtake his teammate Team Sun Chao in the last race of last weekend.
Read more in Portuguese at Hoje Macau.
