Racing

The 49th Macau Grand Prix with Tony Goldsmith

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Peter Hickman on his way to victory. He crashed on his debut at last year’s Macau Grand Prix, and didn’t make the race as the bike sustained too much damage. That makes his victory in this year’s event even more impressive.

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The start of the race and Martin Jessop leads the field into the tight Lisboa turn on the opening lap.

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Ian Hutchinson leaves pit lane to start Thursday afternoon’s qualifying session. The Macau race was Hutchy’s last appearance on the Kawasaki before he moves to the Tyco BMW squad for the 2016 season.

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Ben Wylie heads up San Francisco Hill on the factory Bimota.

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American rider Mark Miller on the American-built EBR machine. Miller looked good throughout, and brought the EBR home in 13th place.

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Ian Hutchinson rounds San Francisco during Friday morning’s qualifying session.

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Liechtenstein rider Horst Saiger during Friday’s qualifying session.

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John McGuinnes had his Senior TT winning bike under him at Macau and was clearly happy. He looked fast all weekend and just missed out on a podium position to Michael Rutter.

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Martin Jessop rounds San Francisco on his way to Pole Position.

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Mr Macau., Michael Rutter has more wins than anyone else on the Guia Circuit with seven. He looked strong again this year and qualified in second place.

His traction control stopped working at the start of the race, which effectively ended his hopes of a win. Having to relearn how to ride the bike, he dropped back to fifth before recovering to claim the final spot on the podium.

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Two-times Isle of Man TT winner Gary Johnson during a break in practice.

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Martin Jessop on his way into the Moorish Hill section of the course during Thursday morning’s practice session. The bikes are the first to take to the track each year and the circuit conditions are always difficult in that session.

After all, these are public roads and until a few sessions are complete, the track offers very little grip.

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It’s been fantastic to see Ian Hutchinson back fighting at the front of international road races this year. To have gone what he has gone through and come back to winning races is truly inspirational.

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Gary Johnson is about to cross the line at the end of Thursday evening’s qualifying session.

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Isle of Man TT legend John McGuinness leaves the pits during qualifying.

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Lee Johnston at the Maternity section of the track. Not being familiar with the Macau track I spent some time on Friday evening studying the circuit on Google Maps for a location to shoot the warm-up session.

I was trying to find somewhere that looked like it had a road joining the track shortly after a bend. I picked what looked like a possible spot, mapped the route on my phone and set off walking with my 15 kilos of camera gear on my back.

I’d left myself enough time to move somewhere else if  the location was a no-go area but thankfully the gamble paid off.

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Four time Macau winner Stuart Easton at the same section, just shot a little wider. The tall building on the right is the Grand Lisboa hotel and casino.

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Ian Hutchinson leads the group chasing the final spot in the Lisboa corner.

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John McGuinness at the end of Friday’s qualifying session.

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Gary Johnson and Michael Rutter battling hard for the final podium place.

Ian Hutchinson in the build up to Friday afternoon’s qualifying session.

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Peter Hickman is moving to the factory-backed GBmoto Kawasaki team and is going be a major force in all of next year’s international road races.

Photos: © 2015 Tony Goldsmith / www.tonygoldsmith.net – All Rights Reserved

Tony Goldsmith is an Isle of Man based freelance motorcycle racing photographer specialising in MotoGP and the Isle of Man TT races. His website can be found at www.tonygoldsmith.net. He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

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