After having a relatively average season this year in Formula 3, Luke Browning certainly wasn’t one of the favorites coming into this weekends Macau grand prix. But Browning surprised everyone on Friday with a stunning lap to get pole position and then followed that up by winning the qualification race yesterday. But with a grid full of talented more experienced drivers behind him could he really hold on to the lead of the race? Browning kept it clean on the first lap committing to the inside line on the long run to Lisboa to protect himself from attack from behind as rivals tried to capitalize on his slipstream. One of those drivers was Alex Dunne who had a great race yesterday and started on the front row. He had a great chance to take the lead off Browning but was forced to go round the outside, outbreaking himself and going straight into the turn one barriers.

When the race resumed on lap 2 Browning led from the Prema trio of Beganovic, Mini and Aron with Dennis Hauger in 5th. On lap 3 Beganovic tried to go around the outside of teammate Mini for second place into turn one but outbroke himself and hitting the barriers in the same way that Alex Dunne had done.

On lap 5 of the race Dennis Hauger passed Paul Aron for P3 in what was turning into a great race for the Norwegian all while Luke Browning was flying out in 1st. Lap 8 saw an incident between Marcus Armstrong and Noel León but was over shadowed by a huge incident for Paul Aron who was running 5th at the time.

The incident spilt Aron’s car in two, setting it on fire and bringing out the red flag. Thankfully Aron was unharmed and explained to the press that he had a brush with the wall at the corner before the hairpin but, after that, the car felt fine, so he kept going. On the next lap, going into the fast bit of the track, his right rear toe-link failed and he went straight into the wall. 

After a delay of half an hour the race got going again with Browning nailing the restart as did Dennis Hauger who went around the outside of Gabrielle Mini’s Prema to take second place. Things settled down for a while after that until Nikola Tsolov hit the wall at the final corner on lap 13 bringing out the safety car once again. The race would finish behind the safety car with Luke Browning winning the 2023 Macau grand prix from Dennis Hauger and Gabrielle Mini.

So, it was an entertaining return to Macau after 3 years of absence due to covid-19 . It had all the drama you would expect with great battles, dramatic crashes and a new winner that has put himself in the spotlight for an F1 seat.

He now joins Franco Colapinto and Zak o’sullivan in the race for a seat at Williams. Colapinto and o’sullivan will be getting their first taste of F1 machinery next week in Abu Dhabi and it will be interesting to see how they perform.

Here are the full results for the final F3 race of 2023

Pos.	No.	Driver	Laps	Time	Delay
1	11	Luke Browning	15	35’08.337
2	27	Dennis Hauger	15	35’08.684	0.347
3	9	Gabriele Minì	15	35’09.036	0.699
4	28	Mari Boya	15	35’09.375	1.038
5	15	Pepe Martí	15	35’09.646	1.309
6	1	Richard Verschoor	15	35’10.096	1.759
7	12	Isack Hadjar	15	35’10.686	2.349
8	24	Zane Maloney	15	35’10.875	2.538
9	17	Oliver Goethe	15	35’11.157	2.820
10	21	Laurens van Hoepen	15	35’11.345	3.008
11	19	Sophia Flörsch	15	35’11.735	3.398
12	2	Roman Staněk	15	35’12.306	3.969
13	25	Dan Ticktum	15	35’13.068	4.731
14	20	Tommy Smith	15	35’13.349	5.012
15	3	Ugo Ugochukwu	15	35’13.467	5.130
16	22	Christian Mansell	15	35’13.816	5.479
17	7	Matías Zagazeta	15	35’14.068	5.731
18	29	Marcus Armstrong	15	35’15.198	6.861
19	18	Noel León	15	35’15.977	7.640
20	5	Max Esterson	15	35’21.558	13.221
Ret	23	Nikola Tsolov	11	22’54.877	–
Ret	16	Sebastian Montoya	10	35’15.534	–
Ret	6	Charlie Wurz	9	24’37.058	–
Ret	10	Paul Aron	7	16’36.274	–
Ret	8	Dino Beganovic	2	5’19.879	–
Ret	14	Alex Dunne	0	–	–