Gustavo Menezes

Gustavo Soiblemann Menezes (born 19 September 1994) is an American-Brazilian racing driver.

Menezes began karting in 2001, and took his first championship in 2005 in the IKF Region 7 Sprint - HPV 1 Cadet. He additionally won the SKUSA SuperNationals in both the 2003 and 2004 editions. In 2007 he was the Stars of Tomorrow Juniors champion. In 2008 he began karting outside the United States. In Asia he competed in the CIK-FIA Asia-Pacific Championship becoming 5th in the championship in 2008. That same year Carlos Sainz, Jr. won the championship. In Europe he competed in championship in among others Monaco, Sweden and Belgium. He competed in the world karting championship from 2009-2010, but he started his single-seater career in 2011.

In 2013 Menezes competed in the German Formula Three. He drove the full season with Van Amersfoort Racing and won two races. He became 4th in the championship with 241 points.

Menezes began his endurance racing career in 2013, driving for RSR Racing in the American Le Mans Series in the Prototype Challenge class. He only entered the Petit Le Mans with co-drivers Bruno Junqueira and Duncan Ende and finished 29th overall and 6th in class.

Both in 2014 and 2015 he competed again with RSR Racing and again in the Prototype Challenge class. In those two seasons he entered three races. In 2014 he only entered the 24 Hours of Daytona, but he and his co-drivers were unable to finish and were classified in a disappointing 63rd position. In 2015 he entered the first two races of the season: the 24 Hours of Daytona, where he finished 34th overall and 4th in class, and the 12 Hours of Sebring, where he finished 31st overall and 6th in class.

After he had finished 4th in the championship in the German Formula Three, Menezes graduated to the FIA European Formula 3 Championship in 2014 and drove again with Van Amersfoort Racing. He finished 11th in the championship and managed to take two third-place finishes at Spa-Francorchamps. In 2015 he joined Jagonya Ayam with Carlin.

Following a test at Bahrain near the end of 2015, Menezes signed for Signatech-Alpine to compete in the LMP2 category of the 2016 FIA World Endurance Championship, partnering Nicolas Lapierre and Stéphane Richelmi. The team experienced a dominant campaign, winning four races, including three wins in a row and a class victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and ended up winning the title. As a result of his impressive debut season, Menezes was selected to drive a Porsche 919 Hybrid LMP1 car at the post-season rookie test. The American's hot streak continued into 2017, as he took two race wins in the Asian Le Mans Series held during the winter. However, the trio of Menezes, Tung Ho-Pin, and Thomas Laurent missed out on the overall title due to accident damage sustained at the start of the season finale.

For the main 2017 campaign, ahead of which he was upgraded to gold-ranking by the FIA, Menezes returned to Signatech-Alpine for another season of the WEC, this time driving alongside a litany of other drivers throughout the year. Despite scoring three pole positions and five podiums, chief among which being a second successive triumph at the Circuit of the Americas, the team ended up third in the standings.