A1 Team Brazil’s Felipe Guimarães will star alongside the likes of Scott Speed, Dan Wheldon, AJ Allmendinger and Marco Andretti as he takes to the track at the 2008 Performance Racing Industry All-Stars Karting Classic. The event, now in its third year, will take place at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida today, Thursday 11 December.

The Performance Racing Industry Trade Show is recognised as the world’s largest auto racing trade show, annually attracting over 45,000 members of the racing industry from 45 companies. The All-Stars Karting Classic is the jewel in the crown of the event, and has been given more gravitas with the news that Fox Sports, one of the biggest TV networks in North America, will televise a half-hour broadcast of the action in the first week of April 2009, bringing karting to a network that can be seen in more than 93 million households.

Widely thought of as one of Brazil’s most prolific karting drivers today, 17-year-old Felipe Guimarães has most recently been seen racing for A1 Team Brazil in the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport, picking up strong points in the Feature race in Malaysia two weeks ago.

His karting history is truly impressive, and he finished second in the 2007 Panamerican ICC karting championship, running the season alongside a year in South American Formula 3, in which he finished fourth in his debut single-seater year. More recently he was seen dominating the final of 2008 Florida Winter Tour Rotax Senior Championship in March of this year, topping the timesheets in every session, securing two pole positions and two feature race wins, leading ever lap and emerging as Champion, despite missing the opening two rounds of the championship in Homestead.

Following that, in August he took the crown at the prestigious Brazil National Karting Championship (the Campeonato Brasileiro de Kart, Graduados A) – the country’s top national title.

More information on the All-Stars Karting Classic is available at www.starsofkarting.com while information on the PRI show can be found at www.performanceracing.com

Felipe Guimarães: “I’m really excited about this event and racing alongside some big names in racing. I have not had the chance to kart against many of these drivers before and I think it will be an interesting race. Some of the top people from karting all over the world will be competing and some of my old competitors from Brazilian karting so I’m really looking forward to it and think it will be a fantastic event.”