NOVEMBER 21, 2004

Premat wins Macau

France has won at Macau once again with Alexandre Premat bringing his ASM Dallara-Mercedes home at the end of a battle-scarred race which ended after 13 laps with a red flag after a multiple pile-up. Prior to that there had been two Safety Cars. Premat started third on the grid behind Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. It was the Finn who took the lead but at the start of lap two both Rosberg and Hamilton went off, fighting for the Lisboa Corner and Premat took the lead but soon afterwards made a mistake and hit a barrier, which allowed Poland's Robert Kubica to close right up. He was lucky however as on the third lap Alvaro Parente had a big crash in the Solitude Esses, which gave Premat the chance to check out the handling of his car and at the restart he was able to hold his lead while Kubica was slow away and Jamie Green overtook him at Lisboa Corner to take second. Green's hopes of victory disappeared soon afterwards with a puncture and so Kubica was able to get ahead again and Lucas di Grassi moved to third despite rear damage after being hit by Fabio Carbone, who was fourth despite a damaged front wing. The order remained unchanged for the next few laps and then there was another Safety Car when Rodolfo Avila and Christian Jones collided in the Solitude Esses. The race restarted at the end of lap 11 and Premat once again held off Kubica. On lap 12 Carbone managed to overtake di Grassi at Lisboa but the race was stopped shortly afterwards because of another multiple accident, this one triggered by Marko Asmer, the results were taken from the lap before the overtaking move. Di Grassi was given third place ahead of Carbone, Franck Perera (Prema Powerteam), Adam Carroll (Menu Motorsport), Robert Austin (Menu Motorsport), Ronnie Quintarelli (Inging), Richard Antinucci (TOM's) and Nelson Piquet Jr (Piquet Sports).