Despite the announced drop of the Porsche Carrera Cup racing event from this year’s Grand Prix calendar, the Macau Grand Prix Organizing Committee (MGPOC) claim has said that the event is “going as planned and scheduled,” in a written reply to an inquiry from the Times.
“The organization of the six races of the 68th Macau Grand Prix, including the SJM Formula 4 Macau Grand Prix, Sands China Macau GT Cup, Galaxy Entertainment Macau Guia Race, Melco Macau Touring Car Cup, MGM Greater Bay Area GT Cup, and Wynn Macau Challenge Cup, are currently going on as planned and scheduled,” MGPOC said.
They added that, “The six major integrated tourism and leisure enterprises in Macau will each sponsor one of the six races which make up this year’s Macau Grand Prix program, as previously stated.”
The response is to an inquiry from the Times regarding the current situation of the event, as rumors circulating within teams and organizers of the event noted difficulties in granting enough entries for some of the racing events. These include the Porsche Carrera Cup Challenge, officially named Wynn Macau Challenge Cup, as well as the Formula 4 racing event.
A source that has asked not to be named told the Times over the weekend that, besides the drop of the Porsche event, organizers were also struggling to ensure that all fifteen racers that competed in the first rounds of this year’s Chinese F4 Championship would participate in the local event.
According to the same source, until last Saturday the organizers had only received the entries of 12 or 13 racers for the F4 race, and of those an undisclosed number were not yet fully secured – putting the event at risk if less than 10 entries are confirmed.
According to the latest MGPOC statement, though not in direct response to the rumors mentioned, there are no such problems and preparation is underway as planned.
The source, familiar with the organization of the event, also told the Times that these difficulties in securing a final entry list were the justification for the lists not yet being published despite there being less than a week until the official opening of the event.
Late last month the coordinator of the MGPOC Pun Weng Kun said that the organizers had received requests to participate in this year’s event from foreign racers. However, the MGPOC has declined these requests, recommending the drivers wait one more year to rejoin the event.
Local touring
car races to split
In response to the same inquiry, the MGPOC clarified that the organizers’ solution to the dropping of the Porsche Carrera Cup Challenge was to split the Macau Touring Car Cup racers into two completely separate categories. This was done until 2017, when the Macau Touring Car Cup and Macau Road Sport Challenge were merged into a single race.
The resulting racing event took place with a combination of cars with different specifications, ranging between 1.6 and 2.0-liter turbocharged and above displacement engines.
A similar solution was chosen to retain the sponsorship of the racing events by opening up the Melco Macau Touring Car Cup to entries of 1.6-liter Turbo cars, while the Wynn Macau Challenge Cup will take entries of cars with engine capacity of 2.0 liter and above.
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