For many years, Macau Grand Prix has been held in the third week of November. The host of the traditional race meeting, Macau, consists of a peninsula in the South China Sea and a small island offshore, having an area of just 28.6 square kilometers in total. It takes about an hour by ferry from Hong Kong.

Macau had been a Portuguese colony until 1999 but was returned to People's Republic of China on December 20th on that year to become one of the special administrative regions of the country. It is globally well known and very popular as a tourist destination. According to a survey by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) in 2012, 13.57 million tourists visited Macau annually, which ranked the area in 20th in the world, and the number has been increasing every year.

Macau has three major tourism resources: the casinos, a World Heritage site and Macau Grand Prix.
It is one of the largest casino resorts in the world and its gross gaming revenue now outstrips that of Las Vegas. The casinos are totally legal in Macau and very popular as good clean social fun for ladies and gentlemen. Baccarat, slot machines or Tai Sai - Chinese name of dice game - are played in the casinos and the major high end hotels often have their own casino rooms.

The Historic Centre of Macau is the 31st World Heritage Site in China on the UNESCO's list. The area has unique and beautiful streets that are the mix of Eastern and Western cultures since the Portuguese colony era and the Ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral is probably the most famous spot in the area. It is safe to say almost all package tours bound for Macau include a visit to this World Heritage.

Last but not least, Macau Grand Prix is also an important tourism resource for the special administrative region. For the annual festival of speed, a temporary race track is created in the city by blocking up public roads that people use for daily activities except for the race weekend.

The street circuit is so exciting and challenging for the drivers, as the track is confined by the guard rails on both sides and there is almost no escape zone alongside. Unlike the permanent race circuits, the track surfaces have a lot of bumps, ruts and irregular cants here and there, so the drivers have to take them into account when they drive around it.

The 6,120m track has a very wide and high speed section which is called as the ocean side and this section includes the start-finish line. Then, after getting through Lisboa Bend which is the famous accident-prone corner and San Francisco Hill, it enters the so-called mountain side section. The track becomes considerably narrower here, because it runs through the back streets of a residential area. The first half of this section has a lot of corners on uphill roads and requires the high level of car control skill especially in braking.

The descending second half of the mountain section has a couple of low speed tight corners, Donna Maria Bend and Melco Hairpin. After exiting the hairpin corner which is the narrowest part of this track, a short straightaway leads to Fishermen's Bend which marks the end of the mountain side section and the track comes back to the wider ocean side.

The drivers bravely attack on this dual nature street track but overtaking is extremely difficult here. Car control must be very precise because they have to use the full width of the track at corners to go faster, but without touching the barriers. As there is virtually no margin between the track and the guard rails, a slightest mistake, or running just a few centimeters wider, can lead to a disastrous clash.

This coming meeting is the 60th edition of Macau Grand Prix since its long history started in 1954. The origin of the event was a four hour automobile race in the Portuguese colony which was rapidly growing by overseas trade in those days. After the successful first meeting in which 15 competitors took part, the scale of the event expanded with each passing year. Since then it has become to be considered as an important international race event and to attract much attention from around the world, as not a few racers have acquired the stature of legend by their performance in Macau.

In recent years, Macau Grand Prix consists of a wide variety of car and motorcycle races, with the two major categories, Formula 3 Grand Prix Race and Guia Race for touring cars, at the top of them.

Formula 3 replaced the preceding car regulations for the Grand Prix in 1983. Yokohama Tire has been the sole tire supplier for the Macau F3 Grand Prix since its first year and the company celebrated the 30th anniversary milestone as the Grand Prix's official supplier last year.

Since the top contenders from the Formula 3 championships around the world gather in Macau and race each other very hard, the Grand Prix is often called as the race to decide the F3 world champion. With late Ayrton Senna, the winner of the first F3 Grand Prix in 1983, at the top of the list, many racing drivers have boosted their careers by good results in Macau on their way to Formula 1 or other professional race categories. Therefore, the Grand Prix is one of the key stepping stones to success for the promising young drivers.

Guia race is run as the season finale of the FIA World Touring Car Championship series. In the past, a lot of legendary battles by the tin-top cars were seen in Macau because the races were often fought as the championship showdowns. Yokohama Tire has also been the official tire supplier of the world championship since 2006.

In addition to these two top categories, the GT Asia series that tours around the Asian countries, using the FIA GT3 cars, also rely on Yokohama Tire as the sole tire supplier for the series. Even in other categories that the competitors have freedom of choice about tires, many of leading drivers and teams choose the Yokohama's products for success. In short, Yokohama Tire has been one of the essential partners of Macau Grand Prix for years and it can be said that the banners of the official tire supplier for the F3 and Guia race are the basso continuo of the race weekend.

In this year's 60th edition of Macau Grand Prix, the event will span two weeks to accommodate 13 race categories in which about 350 racers from 38 countries will take part. The number of competitors increases by almost 50 % from the last year's 221.

According to the organizing body, Macau Grand Prix Committee, the total budget for this year's event will be around 300 million pataca (37.5 million US dollar), including the cost to build a new race control tower which will become a symbol of the ever evolving Macau Grand Prix.