Brazil

Interlagos, Three Champions and Feijoada

Brazil has hosted 52 Grands Prix and produced eight world titles, and its food carries Amerindian, African, European and Asian roots in every region.

Brazil has staged 52 World Championship rounds since its first in 1973, missing only 2020 in every season up to 2025. The Brazilian Grand Prix accounts for 47 of them, and since 2021 the race has carried the name São Paulo Grand Prix, five times so far. Interlagos in São Paulo has been the main stage with 42 rounds, while Jacarepaguá in Rio de Janeiro held ten between 1978 and 1989. The 2026 São Paulo Grand Prix is scheduled for November. Alain Prost won in Brazil six times, more than any other driver.

Brazil's roll of champions is a long one. Emerson Fittipaldi won titles in 1972 and 1974, Nelson Piquet in 1981, 1983 and 1987, and Ayrton Senna in 1988, 1990 and 1991. Senna won 41 Grands Prix, Piquet 23 and Fittipaldi 14, and the country even had its own constructor, Fittipaldi Automotive. Rubens Barrichello started 323 races and won eleven, the same number of wins as Felipe Massa, and Gabriel Bortoleto carries the flag on the current grid.

Brazilian cooking carries Amerindian, African, European and Asian roots, and across a country of continental size it changes enormously, as a kitchen that size is entitled to. The first peoples cooked with cassava, cashews, pineapple and açaí. European immigrants brought wheat, wine, greens and dairy, enslaved Africans shaped the cooking of the coastal states, and Japanese immigrants introduced much of what Brazilians now think of as Asian food. Through it all, rice and beans remain the foundation of the daily table.

The race city has a kitchen of its own. The classic São Paulo plate is virado à paulista: rice and beans, sautéed kale, fried plantain and a pork chop. The city is also home to the pastel, thin pastry fried around its filling. Across the southeast, feijoada, the national dish, is a beloved midweek or Saturday lunch, Minas Gerais adds tutu de feijão and pão de queijo, and in the south the grills are lit for churrasco.

A taste of Brazil

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