Pedro Paulo Falleiros dos Santos Diniz (born 22 May 1970) is a Brazilian businessman and former racing driver. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
Pedro Diniz (Pedro Paulo Falleiros dos Santos Diniz) was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and his father, who also used to race, owned the Pao de Acucar supermarket chain and the CBD distribution company.
Stating in karts in 1987, two years later Pedro moved into Brazilian Formula Ford, followed by racing in 1990’s Sud-Am F3 series, where his best result was a podium place at Interlaces.
In 1991 he moved to Europe to race in British F3 with West Surrey Racing (alongside Rubens Barrichello and Jordi Gene) then moved to Edenbridge Racing in 1992, taking two podium finishes at Thruxton and Brands Hatch.
Then came two seasons with Forti Corse in F3000 and his best result was a fourth-place finish at Estoril in 1994. He stayed with Forti as they moved into F1 (with Roberto Moreno plus Rene Arnoux as driver coach) but the car was uncompetitive and his best result was seventh in Australia.
From here he 1996 he signed with Ligier and Tom Walkinshaw for 1996, and started the season season relatively well, going on to score his season’s best results with sixth place finishes in Spain and Italy. During the year he was involved in one of the season’s most memorable moments, when he was forced to leap from his car in Argentina. His fuel tank leaked, resulting in the car becoming engulfed in flames and fortunately he escaped from it though an English newspaper featured a photo of the incident, captioned as ‘Diniz in the Oven.’
In 1997 Tom Walkinshaw took over the Arrows team and Pedro raced for them (with Damon Hill) and outqualified him at Spa plus beat him several times on the track. Unfortunately it would be a frustrating season, with his best result being a fifth place finish in the Luxembourg GP at the Nurburgring. Staying with them the following season, he took points at Monaco (sixth) and Spa (fifth) and ended the season with the same number of points as team mate Mika Salo. At the end of the season, he decided to leave Arrows but the team insisted that they had the right to exercise their option to keep him due to a clause in the contract. The contract dispute eventually went to F1’s Contract Recognition Board and they ruled in his favour.
Pedro then spent two years with Sauber, with Jean Alesi as team mate in 1999, and had sixth place finishes at Canada, Great Britain and Austria. During this year he was fortunate to survive with just a bruised knee and shoulder after an accident in which his car rolled and it was later revealed that the Sauber’s rollbar had failed when it hit the ground. His second season at Sauber (now alongside Mika Salo) was a disappointing one for them, with his best result being seventh at the European GP.
Pedro then became dissatisfied at Sauber over a test session shoot out at Mugello against Enrique Bernoldi but, after discussions with the Prost and Sauber teams, he decided to withdraw from active motorsport. His family purchased a 40 percent stake in the Prost team and took a management role within the team but it would be a short-term association as he fell out with Alain Prost shortly before the team went into liquidation.
Pedro returned home after F1 and founded the Formula Renault 2.0 Brazil Championship in 2001 then eventually became a partner in his father’s supermarket chain. He also transformed the family estate into Fazenda da Toca, a large-scale organic farm in São Paulo state, and one of the country’s leading producers of organic eggs, dairy, and fruit. He became a board member of Food Tank, a non-profit organisation that spotlights environmentally, socially, and economically, sustainable ways of alleviating hunger and poverty and works to create networks of people, organisations, and content to push for food system change.
