Andre Ribeiro

18/1/1966

Record updated 18-Jan-08

André Ribeiro is a former racing driver in the IndyCar World Series and CART. Ribeiro drove in Champ Cars for 4 seasons, scoring 3 wins and 2 poles. He drove primarily for Tasman Motorsports and Penske Racing. He made one start in the Indianapolis 500, in 1995, finishing 18th.

Andre Ribeiro
André Ribeiro was born in São Paulo, Brazil. He started racing karts in 1985, winning races in 1985, 1987 and 1988. Moved to Brazilian Formula Ford in 1989, Formula Opel in 1990 and Formula 3 in 1991.

He began driving Indy Lights for Tasman Motorsports in 1994, winning rookie of the year honors, taking four poles and winning at Portland, Mid-Ohio, Vancouver and Laguna Seca. He finished second in the overall points.

Ribeiro moved to Indy Cars in 1995, qualifying his Reynard 95I Honda in the top-10 six times. He took one win, at Loudon. However in his 17 starts he also crashed out five times, went out with mechanical failure five times and was flagged five times, giving him just two finishes running the full race distance. He was third in the rookie of the year voting. 1995 alsosaw his only appearance in the Indy 500. He qualified in 12th and finished 18th.

In 1996 he switched to a Lola T9600 Honda. He took wins in Rio de Janiero and Michigan and had five other top-eight finishes. He took pole at Toronto and also qualified in the top nine in 11 of his 16 races.

Still driving for Tasman Motorsports in 1997 he started the season with a Lola T9700 Honda but results were dissapointing with only a sixth in Australia from his first nine races. Tasman Motorsports Group then purchased a Reynard 97I chassis from Walker Racing. With the new chassis, he qualified eighth at Cleveland and seventh at Toronto in its first two weeks with Tasman. Ribeiro finished third at Toronto for his team's best performance of the season and ended up 14th in the standings.

Andre Ribeiro's hopes for 1998 skyrocketed after Team Penske canned Paul Tracy and hired Ribeiro for the season. In the Penske Mercedes his qualifying performance was not bad though he did fail to make the grid at all at Nazareth. In races he anly managed two top ten finishes, 9th at Motegi and 7th at Vancouver.

He retired from racing at the end of the 1998 season and went to work with Roger Penske in South America, with United Auto, running over 15 car dealerships in the São Paulo area.

 



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