Roberto Moreno

Roberto Pupo Moreno (born 11 February 1959

After winning the 1976 Brazilian 125cc Karting championship, Moreno set his sights on getting to Europe. He arrived in England in 1979, to race in his first season in Formula Ford. He did some races with Marc Smith racing who was the works Royale driver for that year. Marc had a two car transporter to take his and Roberto's car. Roberto was the driver and the mechanic for his Royale car. Ralt owner/designer Ron Tauranac lent Moreno an old shed to work out of as his home base. He had a couple of good results, and these convinced Ralph Firman Sr, to sign him as a works Van Diemen driver for the 1980 season. Whilst driving for Firman, he would win the Townsend Thoresen British Formula Ford title, winning eight races in the process. Meanwhile, in Europe, he drove the same car to three more victories, earning himself second place in the EFDA Townsend Thoresen Euroseries Formula Ford 1600 Championship. His also finished 4th in the RAC British series and 6th the P&O Ferries series. He then rounded out the season by winning the Formula Ford Festival. Moreno would return to race at the Formula Ford Festival in the same car at the 50th anniversary of the Festival in 2021.^[3][4]

Moreno's success alerted the attention of no lesser person than

Moreno was winning races in Formula Atlantic, Formula Mondial and Formula Three, when he received a call-up from

Moreno went back to North America with Siddle. A sponsor had been found for a whole season of Formula Atlantic, but the support race at Long Beach GP was changed to a Super Vee, then he lost his sponsor. Despite the set-back, his new team, Theodore Racing went off and won the first race at Willow Springs. With the prize money, he did two more races, before the team stopped racing. Luckily for Moreno, the team owner, Teddy Yip help finance a move to another team. He won four races, while championship rival, Michael Andretti won three. Moreno missed out on the title as every time he won, Andretti would finish second.^{[citation needed]}

For 1984, Roberto decided to return to Europe to race F3. Whilst pre-season testing with

FIA International Formula 3000 Championship in 1988 in an unsponsored Reynard 88D made the impression needed for a big team to recruit him. Instead, he signed a testing contract with Ferrari, who helped him land a racing drive with the ambitious Coloni outfit. The car was never competitive and Moreno only made the grid four times out of 16 attempts.^[8][9][10]

For the 1992 season, he found himself back with the minnows, signing for Andrea Moda. The outfit had risen from the ashes of Scuderia Coloni, and after two non-starting races with Alex Caffi and Enrico Bertaggia, decided to start over with Moreno and Perry McCarthy (who would later claim fame as the original Stig on the BBC motoring show Top Gear). Moreno and McCarthy faced an uphill struggle, with the uncompetitive team scrambling to even get to most races. Moreno would only qualify the under-tested, under-funded car once, for the Monaco Grand Prix,^[11] before the team collapsed following team owner Andrea Sassetti's arrest at the Belgian Grand Prix.^[9][10]

After the Andrea Moda disaster, he spent the next two seasons racing Italian and French

In April 2006, after just one outing in a Brazilian Stock Car at Jacarepaguá, Moreno substituted for Ed Carpenter at Vision Racing, in the Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.

In August of the same year, Moreno became the first driver to test the new Panoz-built Champ Car. According to former series champion Paul Tracy, "[Moreno's] a guy who's not going to go out there and make mistakes and go off the road. They need to put miles on the car and run it fairly quickly, and he's the perfect guy for the job."^[12]

After running thousands of miles of testing in the Panoz DP01, Moreno got a chance to race it at the 2007 Grand Prix of Houston, substituting for the injured Alex Figge at Pacific Coast Motorsports.^[13]

Roberto drove as a replacement for an injured Stéphan Grégoire at the 2007 Indianapolis 500 for Chastain Motorsports. He crashed the car early in the race and finished in last place.

Moreno's helmet has traditionally been yellow, with blue, red, and white wings adorning the visor, sides, and chin area. Written on the lower portion of the helmet is the name "Moreno." Later versions of his helmet have included blue cylindrical designs along with the wings. His helmets are designed by Sid Mosca.

Year	Team	Co-Drivers	Car	Class	Laps	Pos.	Class Pos.
1984	Skoal Bandit Racing Team	Guy Edwards Rupert Keegan	Porsche 962	C1	72	DNF (accident)

Year	Team	Co-Drivers	Car	Class	Laps	Pos.	Class Pos.
2005	Spirit of Daytona Racing	Doug Goad Stéphane Grégoire Bob Ward	Crawford-Pontiac DP03	DP	194	DNF (cooling system)
2007	Brumos Racing	J. C. France Hurley Haywood João Barbosa David Donohue	Riley-Porsche Mk XI	DP	662	4th

Year	Team	Co-Drivers	Car	Class	Laps	Pos.	Class Pos.
1987	BMW Schnitzer	Allan Grice Willi Siller	BMW M3	Div.2	178	DNF (piston)

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap.)

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap.)

(key) (races in italics indicate fastest lap)

(key)

¹ Run on same day.

² Non-points race.

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