Dudu Salamonde “é du Brasiiiil”

On Sunday, in Mexico City, 20-year-old Kimi Antonelli could become Formula 1 World Champion. The Italian agency Minardi Management, which discovered him as a child, now has their sights on a 15-year-old Brazilian called Dudu Salamonde. In 2027, Salamonde will make his debut in the same category where Antonelli became champion at 16, aiming to repeat the feat in his first year.

The cost of his first F4 season is about €1.3 million, but this is just the first step. In Formula 1, there are only 22 spots worldwide, two of which are already taken by Brazilian drivers. Next week, Gabriel Bortoleto will race in Interlagos for his second season in F1, where he has tied for the most points in the history of Audi and is evenly matched with veteran Nico Hülkenberg.

In 2027, Rafael Câmara, who was Fórmula 3 Champion in 2025 and now competes in F2, will make his debut for Haas and will be only the 34th Brazilian to compete in a Formula 1 season. For the first time in a decade, Brazil will have two drivers on the grid. The question remains whether this is the beginning of a new generation or just a fortunate coincidence.

The competition is now to secure the third Brazilian on the grid, and Salamonde is the youngest in the lineup. While not the most promising, Pedro Clerot and Fernando Barrichello, son of Rubens, already race in Fórmula 3. However, it is the step from karting that often decides a career, and many end there. From Paulista, he was Brazilian Kart Champion in 2024 and secured the sole spot for Brazil in the Rotax Junior World Championship in Bahrain the following year.

In 2026, he raced against the world's elite kart drivers for the Italian team Parolin, without winning but gaining valuable experience. Now, Salamonde faces the most difficult (and expensive) jump in a driver's career: moving from karts to single-seaters. Brazil is increasingly creating talent at the base level of motorsport. In 2022, Vicar, the promoter of Stock Car, created F4 Brazil, homologated by the FIA.

Its first champion was Pedro Clerot. Another talent, Heitor Dall’Agnol, was F4 Champion in 2025 and will race this year in Eurocup-3, a lower category contested in Europe. There are now two main routes to Europe: one goes through F4 Brazil, as have Clerot and Dall’Agnol, and the other takes the pilot directly from the European kart to F4 Italian – the path Salamonde has chosen.

Like Câmara, most pilots leave Brazil still in their teens. What hasn't changed is the financial challenge. A professional karting season in Brazil costs between R$ 400,000 and R$ 500,000, while in Europe it rises to around €200,000. A single day of testing with a F4 car costs about €12,000. After F4 comes Regional Formula, F3, and F2, each more expensive than the last.

This is why Salamonde's career is being run as a long-term project under Minardi, which has him as its sole Brazilian driver. The project combines its own resources, private sponsorship, led by EXA Tecnologia, the entrepreneur Alberto Leite, and the Sport Incentive Law, which allows companies and individuals to allocate part of their income tax to sports projects.

Salamonde's R$1 million sponsorship was approved in 2024, and the team should be announced by the end of November. The greater challenge comes after F3, when sponsor support, whether direct or via the Sport Incentive Law, becomes decisive. It is also the step where many careers stall. "The financial pressure exists, but I handle it by treating it as an integrated planning issue with sponsors, management, and the team," Salamonde told Brazil Journal.

He already participates in meetings with potential sponsors, who want to know how he views the sport, his career plans, and his physical and mental preparation. In 2027, he will move to Italy, far from friends and home. He calls the move a "necessary sacrifice." In his free time, his favorite program remains the one most common for a boy his age: watching movies.

Among circuits worldwide, he likes Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium, and Interlagos the most. His ideal scenario, in his own words, is to spend a year in each category and reach F1 at 18. He admits that spending two years at one step is part of the process. And if F1 doesn't come, he doesn't imagine himself away from the tracks: he cites endurance racing, IndyCar, and rallying as possible alternatives.

And in five years, on the weekend of the São Paulo GP, he knows exactly where he wants to be. "Starting from the pole position, fighting for victory in front of the Brazilian crowd."