The 17-year-old Italian, who was crowned F4 Middle East champion at the beginning of 2025, pulled off a daring overtaking move on pole position starter Sebastian Wheldon around the outside of the Mandarin Bend kink just after the start to take the lead – and leave himself clear of the incidents that took place behind him.
Olivieri had started from third on the grid behind Wheldon and Nakamura-Berta, two of his rivals from this year’s Italian F4 Championship. But thanks to his millimetre-perfect move at Mandarin he was ahead on the run to Lisboa, the first braking point on the mighty Guia Circuit. Nakamura-Berta found himself to the outside of both Wheldon and Fionn McLaughlin and, when Wheldon got sideways as he turned into the corner, the newly crowned Italian F4 and Euro 4 champion was unable to avoid accompanying the American on a trip into the barrier.
That allowed McLaughlin into second place ahead of Tiago Rodrigues and Thomas Bearman. But further round the lap at Moorish, 2023 Chinese F4 champion Rodrigues hit the wall and Bearman had nowhere to go, eliminating two more leading contenders from the action and triggering the safety car’s only appearance of the eight-lap race.
When the green flags flew at the start of lap four, British F4 champion McLaughlin was ready to attack Olivieri, the Red Bull Junior trying at Lisboa and even at the tight Maternity Bend, before giving the leading car the slightest of nudges at the Melco Hairpin. Olivieri held firm and with three laps remaining had even extended a margin of just over one second, but McLaughlin came back at him.
On the penultimate lap, McLaughlin, who did not complete a flying lap of the circuit until yesterday’s qualifying session after technical problems struck in both free practice sessions, tried another move at Lisboa, but by the final lap it looked as though the Irishman was ready to settle for second place – and a front row grid position for the big race on Sunday. Then there was heartbreak for McLaughlin. He clipped the barrier on the inside of the Melco Hairpin with his right-rear wheel, damaging the car and coming to a halt on the run towards Fishermen’s.
While Olivieri took the chequered flag, Jules Roussel capitalised on the last-minute drama surrounding McLaughlin to grab second place from Rintaro Sato at R Bend – the final corner of the race. That meant two drivers from the French F4 Championship standing on the Macau Grand Prix podium, with Sato emulating his father Takuma, the two-time Indy 500 winner who took victory in Macau in 2001.
After the post-race celebrations came disappointment for Sato, who was adjudged to have not been in his correct position at the start of the formation lap and therefore should have started the race from the pitlane. He was given a 30-second penalty in lieu of a drive-through, relegating him to 11th in the results.
Chinese F4 champion Zhang Shimo spent most of the race shadowing Roussel, but he was a victim of the aftermath of McLaughlin’s incident, damaging the right-front of his car and dropping from a potential third place to seventh. Up to third in the final results therefore came Frenchman Rayan Caretti, who had passed Ary Bansal at Lisboa on the fifth lap. Bansal, the Indian who claimed the GB4 title this year, finished just behind Caretti in fourth and narrowly ahead of Hong Kong’s Kimi Yu Tsai Chan and South Korean Kyuho Lee. The gap between Caretti in third and Lee in sixth in a photo-finish was just 0.630 seconds!
The hobbled Zhang narrowly defeated Japanese F4 runner-up Itsuki Sato to seventh, with Macao driver Marcus Cheong Man Hei and China’s Wang Yuzhe rounding out the top 10.
