An underground car park, a kart, and a stand to fill
There is a place in Asunción — a street food stall, one of those that never change, that existed before you were born and will probably outlast everyone reading this. Miguel and his friends have been going there since they were children. The people who work there know he races. Some of them wear his merchandise. It is a small detail in the arc of a driver who has competed across five countries and three continents, and yet it is the first thing Miguel Maria Garcia mentions when asked where he feels at home. Not a circuit. Not a paddock. A street food stall in Asunción, Paraguay.
When he answered our questions, Miguel was at Imola for pre-season testing ahead of the 2026 Italian GT Championship. Working through the car sector by sector, finding his references, building a relationship with a machine he will need to know by heart before October. A normal day, for someone who has made this sport his life. An extraordinary one, if you trace back the thread that brought a kid from Asunción to this point.
The kart in the car park
Motorsport in the Garcia family is not a metaphor — it is a number. Seven brothers and cousins compete, or have competed, in Paraguay’s National Rally Championship in RC2 class — the same FIA Rally 2-specification cars used in the WRC2. His father and uncles were not exactly enthusiastic about the idea of the kids getting into racing: “But over time, one way or another, everyone found a way to make it happen.” The family business is transport and logistics, and Miguel grew up between the office and the workshop. As a child, he rode dirt bikes on his father’s office grounds. In January 2003, during a summer holiday in Brazil, his father took him to try a rental kart. There is still a photograph. From that day on, he recalls, he talked about almost nothing else.
But the founding moment — the one from which everything else flows — came at Easter 2004. Miguel accompanied his parents on a work trip to Buenos Aires. On the last day before flying home, his father took him down to the hotel’s underground car park. Waiting there was a Cadet kart, with a ribbon. A gift.
“From that specific day, my life changed forever. I still have that kart.”
That is the origin story. Not a Ferrari on television. Not a poster on a bedroom wall. A hotel car park in Buenos Aires, a kart, and a father who understood something before anyone else did.
Fourteen years old, a suitcase, and the USA
At fourteen, Miguel wanted to race in the WSK — the European karting circuit that produces Formula 1 drivers. Budget was the first problem. The second was convincing his parents that he would need to move abroad, live in a workshop, and drive 365 days a year. “An absolute no.” But in January 2015, he secured his first race seat in America, with Ginetta USA in the G40 Cup. The debut went brilliantly, and from that point it gradually became easier to make the case for staying. Tests in Formula 3 machinery and the Road to Indy followed, alongside stints in Formula Atlantic: a non-linear path, built without the scaffolding of a junior academy.
This matters for understanding the kind of driver Miguel has become. He is one of the few active competitors to have raced professionally on tarmac and gravel, in single-seaters and GT cars, across three continents. A versatility that is not superficiality, but depth built layer by layer.
“Rally teaches you the pure driving part of motorsport — driving with broken aero, understanding car physics over crests and jumps, even doing roadside repairs on liaison stages when necessary. It was said that Loeb in the WTCC was always able to run less downforce than his teammates because he was so comfortable with a sliding car. Interesting when you think about it.”
TC2000 and the Argentine Education
In 2022, Miguel made history. He entered the TC2000 and Super TC2000 in Argentina — championships with the kind of television reach that rivals major European series. No Paraguayan driver had ever competed in either before him. It was not a record he chased for the sake of it: it was simply what happened when a driver from Asunción decided to bring his candidacy to the most competitive paddock on the continent.
TC2000 is brutal. Wheel-to-wheel contact is not the exception — it is the grammar of the racing. Miguel arrived with a background in American single-seaters, where respecting track position is part of the unwritten code. The transition could have been traumatic. It was not, partly because of Javier Ciabattari — an engineer who had worked with José María “Pechito” López and with whom Miguel built an immediate understanding.
“He taught me how to really drive — no nonsense, but pushing me hard at the same time. He is known for being quite a character and we clicked perfectly together.”
Then there was Franco Vivian — now a General Motors factory driver in Super TC2000 — who during aero development tests on the Citroën C4 Lounge shared an amount of technical knowledge that Miguel describes as invaluable. In his fourth race weekend, Miguel won. Social media exploded. Factory team principals started acknowledging him.
“It was a before and after.”
He closed the season with a pole position and five combined podiums across the two series. For an absolute debutant in a championship that violent, it was not a result — it was a statement.
A Volcano, a Lamborghini, and a baptism of fire
Photo: Sciarra Gianluca Fotospeedy
In 2023, Miguel brought his CV to Europe and signed with Imperiale Racing for the Italian GT Championship Endurance series. The car was a Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo; the crew was Jack Bartholomew and Mahaveer Raghunathan — an Englishman, an Indian and a Paraguayan in an Italian car. The first race was at Pergusa, in Sicily: a near-oval layout with no real equivalent on the European calendar. But what made that weekend truly unforgettable was not the track. During the race, Etna erupted. Then a near-cyclonic storm broke.
“A baptism of fire in the most literal sense. The only approach was step by step: data and cameras after every outing, and bouncing as many ideas as I could off my more experienced co-drivers. We managed to bring it home in P6.”
The 2023 season ended with two podiums on his absolute GT3 debut, racing against drivers with years in the category. Imperiale Racing is, in his words, “a world-class outfit, with world-class personnel.”
The hit and the bounce: from burgers to a rally car
In November 2024 came the moment that had been building for years. Juncos Hollinger Racing announced Miguel as their Indy NXT 2025 driver, car No. 75, the first Paraguayan in the team’s history. Ricardo Juncos — Argentine, founder of one of North American single-seater racing’s reference teams — had believed in him. Three months later, JHR suspended its Indy NXT programme to focus on IndyCar. Miguel was without a seat. On this chapter, he chooses his words with care:
“This is a matter I cannot comment on for now. What I can say is that all of Paraguay should consider Ricardo Juncos an idol for the opportunity he gave me. I will be grateful to him forever. If life ever brings our paths together again at a racetrack, I am sure we can write history together.”
What happens next is the story Miguel tells with the widest smile. Hyundai Paraguay reached out — or more precisely, he went to cook burgers for the company’s owner. An evening among friends, conversations about life and racing, the discovery that Hyundai was looking to expand its motorsport portfolio. Miguel already had outright victories in the national rally championship and the fastest stage times on record.
“I went to cook burgers and left with a race seat.”
In 2025, he became the second driver for the official Hyundai Motorsport customer racing team in Paraguay’s National Rally Championship, in a Hyundai i20 N Rally 2 — RC2 specification, the same homologation used in the WRC2. An opportunity built from one evening, a brother who made the introduction, a business partner who vouched for him. Life works in mysterious ways. And he has never let a moment go to waste.
The Paraguay that is looking forward
Photo: Sciarra Gianluca Fotospeedy
Miguel is not alone in this. Joshua Dürksen — the other significant Paraguayan driver of his generation — followed the path from F4 through Formula Regional to Formula 2, where he won in 2024. The two share the same primary sponsor, Ueno Bank, and have supported each other long before that coincidence.
“I truly hope the day comes when Joshua steps onto the Formula 1 podium and we hear the Paraguayan national anthem on the world broadcast. It will make me cry with joy — without any doubt.”
In the meantime, Miguel keeps his door open to whoever comes after him. Young drivers in Paraguay are increasingly interested in circuit racing, not just rally. He makes himself available to help them, to make this kind of career feel more normal in his country. There is a statistic he mentions almost quietly, as if it were a private note rather than a public claim:
“In every discipline I have ever competed in, on every continent, I have taken at least one pole position, one podium, or one victory — touring cars, GT, single-seaters, rally, tarmac and gravel. I consider myself part of the group of people who do things, not just talk about them.”
Imola today, Interlagos tomorrow
The future Miguel pictures — the real one, not the press release version — is clear. The FIA World Endurance Championship.
“I have a soft spot for the red cars. I won’t hide it.”
Ferrari. Le Mans. WEC. And then one image that says everything more precisely than any formal statement of intent:
“I know we will fill an entire grandstand at Interlagos with Paraguayan flags, thanks to the proximity. I know it.”
From an underground hotel car park in Buenos Aires, with a Cadet kart as an Easter gift, to Imola in preparation for a season. Through gravel and tarmac, an erupting volcano, a plate of burgers and a handshake. Miguel Maria Garcia‘s story does not look like anyone else’s. And it is only halfway through.
