English writer Philip Newsome recently published “Macau Grand Prix: Photographs 1954-2023”
There was almost nothing in terms of an archive of Macau Grand Prix’s history. I guess nobody had thought to compile one.
It’s been a while since he published his first book on the race in 1992, entitled “Colour and Noise”. Like those that followed, it tells the story of the Macau Grand Prix from the very beginning. “There was almost nothing in terms of an archive of Macau Grand Prix’s history. I guess nobody had thought to compile one. ,” he tells PLATFORM.
His fixation with the Macau Grand Prix began while he was still living in the UK. In 1983, Brazilian driver Ayrton Senna’s F3 victory at the Guia circuit reached English motorsport newsrooms and aroused the writer’s curiosity. “For some reason the idea of this race, held at the end of the season in an exotic faraway place appealed to me and I thought that one day I would like to go see it for myself. ” Two years later, in 1985, “ I had the chance to visit a friend who was working in Hong Kong and I came in November so that I could take in the GP. Brazilian racer Mauricio Gugelmin won that year. The event was everything I hoped and expected it would be. It was love at first sight and the start of an enduring relationship that has lasted to the present day.”
Parked in the Inner Harbour, two pilots are watched by a group of local children (1960)
The warm autumnal sun shines bright in the driver's eyes as they head down to Lisboa Bend (1985)
[The photographs from the 1950s] show a very different Macau to the one we know. The Chinese fishing reeds form a backdrop that can only be Macau
The following year, in 1986, he went to work in Hong Kong and “almost immediately” began his research into the history of the Macau Grand Prix. “I placed an ad in the local press asking anyone who had taken part in the first races to get in touch. I placed an advert in the local press asking for people who took part in the early races to get in touch. I received just one phone call but it was from Roger Pennells,” a driver who had been in pole position in the very first year of the race, in 1954. “He he told me lots of stories from those early years. He also produced a box of photographs of the first two or three Grand Prix. It was like discovering a hidden treasure,” he recalls.
Roger still kept in touch with several of the drivers with whom he shared the track and, “slowly but surely”, Newsome met some of them in Hong Kong, the UK and Australia. One of those contacts was the widow of Paul Dutoit, widely regarded as the founder of GPM. “Like Roger, she gave me access to a large number of images and other items and documents from the very earliest days of the GPM.”
The same enthusiasm
Back in 1954 the 3.8 mile long Guia circuit followed exactly the same route it does today(1954)
The 1956 running lasted well over five hours, Englishman Doug Steane's Mercedes 190SL took the chequered flag to win the longest Macau Grand Prix ever run (1956)
The essential DNA remains unchanged. The layout and nature of the circuit represent as great a challenge as it did for the drivers four decades ago
Newsome’s latest work looks back on 70 years of history, unbroken and continuous. For the author, “it feels different today” than when he first came. But the growth of the race has not taken away its identity. “The essential DNA of the event has remained unchanged from the time I first set foot in Macau. The outline and nature of the circuit poses as huge a challenge as it did to drivers four decades ago and indeed right back to the very first GPM. What has changed is Macau itself. When I first visited, it was a rather sleepy place with only a few hotels. It has been transformed into a shiny metropolis, a centre for business and entertainment.”
This means that the race is “perhaps more polished”, while still representing “one of the world’s most challenging circuits”. As time goes by, and the city and the race change, Newsome says that he has “the same buzz of excitement” when he arrives in Macau for the race weekend.
Accepting our request to highlight some of the photographs featured in the new book, Newsome says that “although every era is special in its own way”, the 1950s is his favorite. “They show a very different Macau to the one we know today. Chinese fishing junks form a backdrop which can only be Macau. Low rise building and dusty tracks”.
A seminal moment in the Macau Grand Prix’s long and illustrious history as Theodore Racing principal Teddy Yip (Right) congratulates Ayrton Senna (Left) immediately after the Brazilian’s dominant win (1983)
The year 1983 marks for Newsome the edition that changed the status of the Macau Grand Prix in the eyes of the international community. Now, he looks to the debut of the FIA FR World Cup as a race that could have the same impact.
“I think it is very promising. The F3 cars of recent years have been getting bigger and more powerful and rather unsuited to the Guia Circuit. The Formula Regional cars look more in keeping with the track and in a way are a throwback to the cars that Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher drove here. Let’s see but I am hopeful that move will be viewed in the same light as the introduction of F3 in 1983.”
