NOVEMBER 18, 2001

Sato wins Macau

Takuma Sato has become the first Japanese driver to win the Macau Grand Prix with a strong performance in the two races on Sunday in his Carlin Motorsport Dallara-Mugen.

TAKUMA SATO has become the first Japanese driver to win the Macau Grand Prix with a strong performance in the two races on Sunday in his Carlin Motorsport Dallara-Mugen.

As usual the race was complicated by accidents. The first race was red-flagged on the first lap after two accidents in the first two corners. Each crash involved several cars.

At the restart Sato took the lead at the Lisboa corner and quickly built up a lead but then a Safety Car was sent out after Jonathan Cochet spun and was hit by Ryo Fukuda. The crash was cleared up and the race restarted but immediately there was another crash when Mark Taylor hit a wall. This left only a handful of laps of racing and Sato again got away from his pursuers with relative ease to win by just over a second.

Sato also won the second race to win overall by 4.4 seconds from France's Benoist Treluyer in a similar Dallara-Mugen. Treluyer beat pole position man Bjorn Wirdheim into third place.

The Formula 3 circus now heads to Korea where the final event of the year will take place next week.

Sato will want to win there as well before he embarks on his career in F1 with the Jordan-Honda team.