Three-time Nascar Special Edition champion in Brazil, Gabriel Casagrande completed another sequence of races at the New Smyrna oval in Florida, where he accelerated in the NASCAR Pro Late Models, the base of American NASCAR. The driver from Paraná competed in three races and achieved two second-place finishes and one fourth-place position with the Nexus Racing team.
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“Very happy with everything we did. I think it was a very important week because it is the most traditional event they have here. They even call it the World Series of Asphalt and drivers come from various parts of the world. We had opponents from NASCAR Mexico, NASCAR Canada. Me representing Brazil, there were people from Europe too, so it was very cool from that point, for being with them and for the performance we had,” explains Casagrande.
“Our team made a very good car in the three races. We qualified in second, fourth, and seventh in a field of always more than 30 cars, so I was very satisfied with that. The performance in the races was very good with two second-place finishes. And yesterday, which was the longest race of 100 laps, we opted for a setup for a longer stint and the car really worked very well when we had many yellow flag laps. We had 50 uninterrupted yellow flag laps, so the pace was very cool, I was there in third passing second, when that yellow flag came out and then at the end I ended up falling back a bit, lost a position, so we finished in fourth,” says Casagrande.
Three-time Stock Car champion and also overall champion of Nascar Brazil, Casagrande made his first oval races in Pro Late Models in 2025, when he even achieved a victory. The driver admits that he intends to do more races in the future on North American ovals.
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“I am very excited about what lies ahead. I think we have great possibilities to do more things around here, I don’t know yet if in this category. But from everything we are showing, being a driver from abroad, having practically zero experience in ovals and the performance we presented, it has been very cool,” explains Casagrande.
Casagrande will return to the tracks in Brazil for the Stock Car opening on March 7 and 8, in Curvelo (MG).
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