VOL. 53 ISSUE 48 DECEMBER 6, 2016 P83
important point to make here
is there's the world's gnarliest
racetrack that threads its way
through the whole friggin' city!
It's like a big amusement park,
built just for us to go out play on
with our superbikes. It's utterly,
totally mental.
My first invite to race at
Macau was in 1998 while riding
for Graves Yamaha. Only two
other riders—Michael Rutter and
John McGuiness—have com-
peted around the 3.85-mile Guia
Circuit more than I have, which
means they're old.
So how did this incredible
race get started? It's a funny sto-
ry actually, if it is to be believed.
It goes like this:
Portuguese settlers arrived
to Macau in 1550. The Ming
Dynasty rented Macau to the
Portuguese Empire in 1557. In
1887, the Portuguese were given
full colony status and the deed
lasted until December, 1999,
when all the young pretty Portu-
guese girls then packed up and
left Macau in the span of one
year, breaking my heart.
But well before the exodus
of the Portuguese colonists,
in 1953, a couple of kids de-
cided they wanted to organize a
"Treasure Hunt Event"—popular
in their day where organizers
would lay out a specific route
and friends would jump in cars
to follow the map in search of
buried mall junk. To do the job
right the kids recruited some
outside "treasure hunt experts"
from Hong Kong, but when
the experts surveyed the kid's
proposed course route along
the highways, they stopped and
proclaimed loudly, "You have a
perfect circuit here for racing
cars, you will drop the treasure
hunt idea and come help us
organize a car race! Settled!"
They agreed and the inaugural
Macau Grand Prix began shortly
thereafter. True story.
Sixty-three-years later and
some of the finest racing drivers
the world has ever seen have
graced the Macau podium. Men
such as Michael Schumacher,
Eddie Irvine, Mika Salo, David
Coulthard, Christian Fittipaldi,
Jacques Villeneuve, Ralf Schum-
acher, Jarno Trulli, Roberto Guer-
rero, Damon Hill, Lucas Di Grassi,
Sebastian Vettel and the immortal
650,000 people live on this tiny
Island on the south coast of China,
across the Pearl River Delta from
Hong Kong – and once a year they
let the best race superbikes there.
