The Macau Grand Prix boasts a long history and this was its 57th version of the classic event. Since 1983, it has been regarded as the race of F3 champions around the world. The late Ayrton Senna was the winner of that very first year for F3 and many more star drivers followed the path. With such a great history as the gateway to Formula One drive, the event always attracts strong attention.

F3 (Formula Three) is one of the handful global formulae in motor racing. Every championship series around the world adopts the identical technical regulation set but the manufacturer of control tires varies among different countries and championships. These rules make this category attractive because only the drivers' talent and the teams' technical capabilities decide the results.

Only leading drivers from a national or regional F3 championship are allowed to enter this Macau Grand Prix and this is why the event is called as the race of champions. ADVAN has been designated as the supplier of control tires for the race since the first F3 race in 1983 as the race organizers recognizes the Japanese tire's consistent performance.

ADVAN also supplies such tires for the German national F3 championship but this doesn't cause any advantage for the German series contenders because the tires for Macau Grand Prix are specially made for this race. This year's Macau tires had different compound from the last year's ones. The Orange Oil, the product of YOKOHAMA's latest environment technology, is blended into the new compound. Being not the last to tackle the environment issues, YOKOHAMA displayed its technological strength and corporate policies with the tires for this event.

Edoardo Mortara, the last year's winner, had been aiming at making history by becoming the first driver to win the F3 Grand Prix race twice. On the other hand, the winning team of 2007 and 2008, Tom's from Japan, was determined to play catch-up after being defeated by Mortara and Signature team last year. One of the Tom's drivers, Yuji Kunimoto, is a younger brother of Kyosuke who won the race in 2008 and was aiming to make another unprecedented feat, the first ever Macau winning brothers!

During the first qualifying session on Thursday afternoon, Mortara and Valtteri Bottas entered by Prema team improved their lap time by almost 1.5 seconds. While Kunimoto came into a 2'15" bracket, the gap with the top two was now more than two seconds. Among the Japanese championship contenders, the Toda team's sole entry, Alexandre Imperatori, was in good form and classified as ninth, the fastest Japanese team's driver, in this first qualifying session.

The second free practice session and another qualifying session were scheduled on Friday but the latter had to be postponed to Saturday because the time table was badly delayed due to a red flag stoppage in a support event.

Even in the second qualifying session, Mortara and Bottas remained as the top two and the last year's winner further improved his time to 2'11"1. Still being the fastest of Japanese series contenders, Imperatori was as much as 2.5 seconds slower than them. Mortara's teammates, Laurens Vanthoor, Daniel Abt and Marco Wittmann ended the session in third, fourth and fifth respectively, which highlighted the Signature team's great form.

The qualifying race began after only a several hours interval after the second qualifying session due to the schedule change. While Mortara made a good start, Abt's getaway was much better than his teammate's and actually got ahead of Mortara once. However, the Italian regained the lead position well before they reached to Lisboa and no one was able to threaten his position until the flag fell. Thus, Mortara got the pole position for the final race on Sunday.

Abt finished in third after being overtaken by Vanthoor in the middle phase of the race. Following these three Signature drivers, Bottas came in fourth and another Signature guy, Wittmann in distant fifth. As the gap between Bottas and Wittmann was more than 9 seconds, the race looked to be a four-way battle.

The formation lap of the all important final race got underway at half past three p.m. The bunch of top five drivers, Mortara, Abt, Vanthoor, Bottas and Wittmann entered the first corner, Lisboa, and went through it without any drama. But there was a collision on the grids, which called for the Safety Car to come out. Immediately after the restart on Lap 3, Mortara failed to keep his lead position at the entry to Lisboa and now Abt became the new race leader. However, his lead didn't last long as he crashed into the barrier by himself during the lap and dropped out of contention.

On Lap 4, the Safety Car came out again to clear up Abt's halted car. The field was led by Vanthoor, followed by Mortara, and, at the beginning of Lap 7, the race resumed for remaining nine laps.

At this second restart, Mortara managed to regain the lead position from Vanthoor on the run down to Lisboa and kept it until the finish, pulling away from Vanthoor and Bottas. With the dignified victory, the reigning champion Mortara made history by becoming the first man to win the Macau F3 race twice, in two consecutive years, which was a great achievement in the long history of this event.