CAREER
It all started with my father's passion for motorsport. From the beginning, he was the one who introduced me to motorsport, when I was just 10 months old, he bought a mini electric car for me to dodge the furniture at home. Over time, I grew and so did the toys. My father always participated in several karting championships and that was what awoke my desire.
At 6 years of age, it was when I first asked to go go karting. From then on my whole story started at the kart Inn Jaguaré. After several heats and victories in indoor karting, my parents decided to take me to take a class with Paulo Carcasci, at the Granja Viana karting track. The idea was to have an evaluation by a professional, to know if it would be worth investing in my career in motorsport.
I started my career in the child category, where I made my debut in the last stage of the year in 2006, finishing in 2nd place. In 2007, I was successful right away and won the runner-up of the São Paulo Cup of Kart Granja Viana. In the following two years, I participated in the Cadet and Super Cadet categories in the same championship and became champion in both years, becoming two-time champion of the São Paulo Cup. As a champion of the Super Cadet, I have the opportunity to compete in a stage of the Florida Winter Tour in the United States. It was an incredible experience for me, who at the time was only 10 years old, to be able to compare myself with international drivers and to have managed to lead the final race.
In 2010, I moved up to the Junior Minor category, where it is time to transition from small karts to large karts. I had a quick adaptation and achieved great results. I became South Brazilian Kart Champion and 4th place in the Brazilian Cup and in the Brazilian Championship. Because of my good participation in the Florida Winter Tour the previous year, we made one more attempt, and in the Orlando stage, I finished in 3rd place. At that time, the categories no longer had engines drawn, which made room for a race for high-level equipment. We have always looked for equipment that could participate in the disputes, but due to the lack of resources, investments were limited. The following year, in the same category, the idea was to keep evolving, always aiming to learn from all situations. In the South American Championship, it was one of the moments that I learned that I should never give up and extract the maximum of the equipment that is available at the moment. During all free practice, I was unable to find the ideal setup, which made me start, in all heats at the end of the pack. At the end of that day, I was already convinced that with the equipment I had, I couldn't fight for the championship, but it was at that moment that I was wrong. On the last day of the race, we would only have another ten-minute warm-up before the final races. That was when, together with my team, I managed to get back on top. I finished 7th in the pre-final and managed to lead most of the final race and ended up winning the Vice-Championship.
In 2012, I made my debut in the Junior category and the following year, after learning from the most experienced drivers who were already in the category, I achieved great results in the main championships of the year. I won the 3rd place in the Brazilian Championship, Vice-champion of Paulista and Copa do Brasil and Champion of the Federations Cup.
In 2014, the moment that every go karting driver desires, which is to become a graduated kart driver, has arrived. My debut was very special, I took pole in the first race of the year. I ended up not being able to finish with a golden key, but I finished in 2nd place. After the Brazilian Championship, where I finished 3rd place again, I was already thinking about the next step in my career. It was at this moment that the question arises as to which would be the correct path.
In October, the opportunity arose to test in the Italian F4, in the Euronova team, led by former Formula 1 driver Vicenzo Sospiri. At that time, I had no experience with any racing car, and that worried me, because it is important to make a good impression on the first test in Europe. With that, I went after a test on any formula car that could give me a basic idea of what I was going to face in Europe. The idea was to find something affordable. I managed to schedule a test in Uruguay, where F4 Sudamericana was taking place at the time, which had conditions similar to what I would find in Italy. It was two days of testing, with just one set of new tires. The first day was to learn the basic techniques of how to guide a formula, so the idea was to learn the braking, acceleration technique and analyze the telemetry graphs. On the second day, already more familiar with the car and the track, we put the new tire on to understand if I was still too far from the pace of the drivers who were participating in the championship. On this day, I managed to break the track record in the category, which made me feel confident about going to Europe and taking the test.
Arriving in Italy, at the Adria race track with the Euronova team, it was two days of testing, with one set of new tires for each day. With each exit to the track, I was adapting and improving. At the end of the second day, when I got out of the car, Vicenzo called me to talk and explain how I should use the tires, to get the most out of them and be able to improve. At the end of the conversation, he gave me another extra set of new tires so I could apply everything he had explained to me. With that, I managed to improve my time and I was 3 tenths faster than the current driver of the car.
After this test, we talked internally which way we should go. That year, the F4 was spreading around the world and we decided to go to England, where motorsport has a lot of tradition. With that choice, I moved to England to be able to stay close to the team so I could always be involved with the team and the engineers. For that, I had to give up friends and family, always aiming at my dream. My first year in F4 was with the SWB Motorsport team, a much simpler team compared to the others, this due to the lack of support and resources, was what was within the budget. During that year, I suffered a lot from the lack of engineer in some races, which made the evolution of the car difficult. Even with this and also lack of testing during the year, there were several situations in which I managed to stand out. A great example of this was the race at Oulton Park, where I arrived without knowing the track and only had two 40 minute practice sessions to adapt and setup the car. Furthermore, my engineer did not arrive until the next day, before the time was up. Even so, I got the 3rd best time in the qualifying. There were other races that I achieved great results which was what made me migrate to the Arden team (3rd force in the championship) the following year.
Due to the good results I obtained with SWB, Arden offered me a very good proposal, with a budget similar to what I had already paid in the first year. With that, we closed the contract for the year 2016, with great expectation of fighting for the championship. At the beginning of the season, Arden lost it's best engineer, with all the setup information for the car. Thus, we suffered a lot during most of the year, developing the car from scratch. Because of the bureaucracy of the team's work, the development of the car was very slow, but working everyday with my engineer at the factory, we managed to improve a lot and at the end of the season we were fighting for victories. By the end of the year, my engineer Pedro Matos became the team's chief engineer for 2017.
At the end of 2016, I received an invitation from AVFormula to test Formula Renault 2.0. I performed three tests, all of them official in the category, together with other teams in the championship. They were very positive tests, which made AVF make me a proposal to compete in the 2017 championship. We did everything to get this contract closed, but it was not possible due to our insufficient budget.
Due to the high costs of the categories in Europe, in early 2018, we opted to go to the United States to dispute the category that at the time was called Pro Mazda. Talking with the teams we got an opportunity with Pelfrey, a very traditional team in American motorsport that had an interesting project. Again, the low budget, allowed us a contract for only the first two stages of the championship, and depending on the results it would be decided whether this contract would extend. During these two stages we saw that the team was going through a difficult period, and so, we decided not to continue with the team after the two stages.
In 2020, I am back to Brazil after a fill years racing in international categories. Now all my efforts will go to Stock light where I am going to compete with W2 Racing / Crown Racing Team.