Macau WTCC finale approaching

Like it happened last year, the FIA World Touring Car Championship will be decided again on the streets of Macau, next week. Because of the nature of the track, it is quite interesting to see which kind of relationship each driver has with the infamous 6.1km Guia street circuit.

In 52 years of racing at Macau, Jörg Müller (winner of the 1993 F3 GP and the 2004 Guia Race) was only the second man to win both the Grand Prix and the Guia Race, after John McDonald who also took the spoils in the Motorcycle GP1

Last year Augusto Farfus managed to win the Guia Race on his first visit to Macau, while Andy Priaulx (twice second in the Guia Race, in 2004 and 2005) and Rickard Rydell (winner of the 1992 F3 GP and third in the 2004 Guia Race) have proved on different occasions that they like this track.

Among the drivers who are still fighting for the WTCC title, those who have struggled most at Macau so far are Yvan Muller and Gabriele Tarquini. The Frenchman raced there only in the 1991 F3 Grand Prix and retired, while the Italian finished 10th in the first leg of the 1988 F3 Grand Prix.

Tarquini recently made two unsuccessful attempts in the Guia Race: he retired in 2002 while fighting for the podium, and did not even take the start last year after a massive crash in qualifying.

Other men who have shone at Macau in the past years are: Duncan Huisman, winner of the Guia Race for three years in a row (2001 to 2003); Tom Coronel who won a leg of the Guia Race in 2001; Nicola Larini, second in the 2002 Guia Race; Jordi Gené, runner up in the 1991 F3 Grand Prix; Jan Magnussen, third in the 1994 F3 Grand Prix and, last but not least, home boy André Couto who won the F3 Grand Prix in 2000.