calendar year, with the highest-placed drivers given priority in receiving an invitation to the race. Within the 30 car grid of the event, each of the major F3 series were represented by their respective champions. British champion Takuma Sato, who had been signed to drive for Jordan Grand Prix in the 2002 Formula One World Championship in October 2001 and was the first contracted Formula One driver to compete at the Macau Grand Prix since the 1985 race, was joined in Macau by German title holder Toshihiro Kaneishi, French series champion Ryō Fukuda, Japanese series winner Benoît Tréluyer and Australian champion Peter Hackett. Three Macanese drivers were issued invitations from the Macau Grand Prix Committee to participate in the event: Jo Merszei, Michael Ho and Lei Kit Meng. British series driver Gianmaria Bruni elected to withdraw from the event and the Korea Super Prix because of a lack of car familiarisation time and he opted to test an International Formula 3000 vehicle. Bruni was replaced with Formula Renault 2.0 UK Championship driver Heikki Kovalainen. Practice and qualifying There were two one-hour practice sessions preceding the race on Sunday: one on Thursday morning and one on Friday morning. In the first practice session, held on a dirty track because of debris left during practice for the Guia Race of Macau and in cool, cloudy weather, Paolo Montin lapped fastest for TOM'S at 2 minutes, 14.510 seconds set in the final minute. He was nearly four-tenths of a second faster than Jonathan Cochet in second who had front braking problems and was fastest until Montin's lap. The rest of the top ten were Sato, Pierre Kaffer, Tiago Monteiro, Yuji Ide, Kaneishi, João Paulo de Oliveira, Kosuke Matsuura and Tréluyer. No major incidents were reported during the session although Mark Taylor and Kovalainen scraped the trackside barriers. Qualifying was divided into two 45-minute sessions; the first was held on Thursday afternoon, and the second on Friday afternoon. The fastest time set by each driver from either session counted towards their final starting position for Sunday's race. The first qualifying session on Thursday afternoon was held in warm weather and in a strong sea breeze from Macau's coastline. Practice pace setter Montin contended from the beginning and took provisional pole position with a 2 minutes, 13.214 seconds lap with less than two minutes left. Sato in second led for much of the session as