Grand prix | Macau’s F3 race subject to uncertain future

The return of the Macau Grand Prix to the pre-pandemic format seems to be encountering difficulties, as local organizers and the automobile international federation (FIA) have different perspectives on how the event will look like this year, media reports show.
Following on comments made last November by FIA’s high ranked officials, including the president Jean Todt, which anticipated the return in 2021 of the major international events and namely the FIA Formula 3 (F3) World Cup, FIA’s World Motor Sport Council announced last Friday that the F3 World Cup has been confirmed on the International Sporting Calendar and was scheduled to take place on November 21, 2021, in Macau.
Nevertheless, the motorsports governing body noted that such a date and event was subject to a contract with the promoter.
Opposing the idea of the resumption of normality for the GP, the event organizer, Macau Grand Prix Organizing Committee (MGPOC), started conversations from the end of last year with Euroformula and Japanese Super Formula Lights (the F3 successor in Japan), to find a way to have such formula cars racing together in 2021 in Macau, the motorsport-specializing website Formula Scout reported.
The idea of merging the two championships in the event in Macau is due to the fact that they both use the new Dallara 320 car, which replaced European F3’s Dallara F317.
Such an idea gained even more form when Euroformula announced its 2021 calendar back in February, which purposedly left room for the trip to Macau in November.
Sources among the teams told the same motorsport website, both in Europe and in Japan, that they supported the idea, saying that they were “confident of racing in Macau [this year].”
Since the new Dallara 320 car has different specifications that cannot meet the current FIA F3 regulations, this can only mean that the F3 World Cup race could never take place with such cars, pointing the efforts of FIA and the MGPOC in totally different directions.
For the time being, the scenario that seems more prospective is the one being followed by the MGPOC, since, according to the calendar announced for the FIA F3 Championship, the racing season will come to an end at Austin’s racetrack in the USA on October 24.
This means that there will be less than one month’s gap between the FIA F3 season finale and the Macau GP, a fact which, due to current restrictions and delays in shipping and traveling, makes teams believe that is not possible to have the cars and contestants ready to race in Macau by November 19, the date on which the local GP kicks off.
In 2020, and due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the F3 World Cup was canceled, being replaced by a race in the Chinese Formula 4 category.