On November 19th, the official qualifying session for the 57th Macau Grand Prix was held, with the Knight Sports RX-8 (Driver: Tatsuya Tanigawa) recording a time that placed him overall third in the Road Sports Challenge Race.

Having had good results last year, winning their class division and coming second overall, Knight Sports came into this year's race with a refined RX-8, having improved the car's engine tuning and tyres among other things. They had pinned their hopes on the qualifying session on the 19th. The Macau Grand Prix is a street race held by blocking off public roads in the area surrounding the Macau ferry terminal. With a long stretch from the ferry terminal to the Lisboa Hotel and a twisty technical section around the Guia Lighthouse, this complex course has no escape zones. With a guardrail that rises up all along the side of the track, any spins or deviations would result in an immediate crash. Not to mention the fact that the course is rather narrow, meaning any accidents have a high risk of involving other cars.

The qualifying session for the Road Sports Challenge race was scheduled on the 19th for 45 minutes from 10:15am, but with a large accident occurring only 15 minutes into the session, it was delayed for approximately one hour. Up until the accident the driver of the RX-8, Tatsuya Tanigawa had recorded the third best time, behind a Lancer Evolution and a Nissan GT-R. His fastest lap was two seconds up on last year, but he was disappointed, saying, "I know I can do better than this." After the session was restarted, he managed to improve his time by another 3 seconds. Even though his standing was still third, in comparison to the race favourite, the GT-R, there was only a 1.5-second difference. The spokesman for Knight Sports, Hidefumi Nakamura was quoted as saying, "Just as we thought, the GT-R is pretty fast. But our car's starting to get the times that we're hoping for, too. First place isn't out of reach, and we're going to be aiming to come from behind and win this race."