Gabriel Macena

Gabriel Deocleciano Macena de Souza (São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil 12/8/1981, better known as Gabriel Macena is a brazilian FARC, TM Lights and TM Master Cup Series driver, he is better known for his off-track controversies and behavior.

Gabriel was born in São Paulo, son of the 4-time Brazilian Stock car Champion, Roberto de Souza and Giuliana Macena, a former model. Despite having a big name attached to him, he chose to drive under his mother's maiden name, intentionally avoiding opportunities that were given to him by his heritage.

Career Start and Breakthrough
Gabriel started racing with karts when he was 10. He raced with karts until he was 16, when he joined the Brazilian Junior Series, a spec series whose objective was to form new Stock Car drivers. He stayed in that series until 1999, in that series he won 5 times in 60 starts.

He eventually was promoted to the Brazilian Stock Car Championship, initially with Gessler Power Team, a mid pack outfit, which ran in the back of the pack for most its tenure, Macena would be called to replace an injured driver at VB Racing, one of the strongest teams at the time, scoring consistent podiums, but failing to win.

By 2002 he'd finally achieve his first win, at the Autodromo Daniel Estevem after dominating the event from the pole position. Macena would be a fixture of the Brazilian Stock Car tour until a series of incidents with officials prompted him to leave the series, and going to FARC Elite Series racing.

FARC Racing
His rookie season in FARC was by any definition, a complete and utter mess, between the first round at Texas World and the New York Autoring, Macena only completed four of his 14 starts, the Rookie Shootout and the qualifying sprints at Columbia, Albuquerque and New York.

However, the feature race at the New York Autoring, Macena was attempting to be more aggresive, in a "do-or-die" effort, paying off in the qualifying sprint, in which he finished 4th, but in the feature race, his new found aggression would harm more than help, as Macena caused two large incidents, injuring in total 3 drivers, and consequently ending the career of Megan Driver. The brazilian received a large amount of criticism from his peers, and finally exploded, with him threatening to hurt Ben Atkins over social media. Those threats would be empty, as Macena won the following feature race at Lake Afton after racing clean and not getting involved in a single incident all throughout the weekend.

After that win, he would not qualify to a Feature until 70/77, in a race he got more wrecked than anything else on earth, despite that, he'd still end in 16th place, a result that would be repeated in the feature race at Talladega, but with less crashing. He once again failed to finish two Sprints in a row, but would bounce back in Chicago, taking his second and most likely last career win, taking the first qualifying sprint of the weekend.

Macena would only finish two other races in that year, the Chicago feature race, and one of Texas qualifiers.

He'd return to FARC in 2015, but his season not only was plagued with incidents not of his own doing, he'd be painfully out of depth, deciding to transfer his team out of America, choosing to race Dash Cup instead.

TM Lights
Macena signed with BlackDiamond Racing for the 2014 TM Lights season, running in the #3 car, he joined Robert Blake and Will Lewis. At California he was one of the fastest BDR cars, as he brought home a 13th place after being able to lead the race at one point.

That was the highlight of his first few races, as while he scored one point at Carbondale and 4 in Sonoma, those races were plagued with incidents in which he was involved, and it wouldn't be until his 11th start, in the Ohio Motor Speedway, that he'd start consistently scoring points, suffering a resurgeance of sorts, jumping all the way to 13th place in the championship standings.

TM Master Cup Series
Macena appeared in the TM Master Cup Series during the 2013 Round of Indianapolis, but didn't qualified. His first start would be later in the season at the Round of Brazil, where he was granted the Promoter's Option. However, his race wasn't good at all, and he started last, finishing in 33rd.He also attempted and didn't qualified to the Round of Decatur.

Later that year, he was tabbed to drive the #71 Maynard Saar Eagle for Saar do Brasil, his longtime stock car racing partner. He would team up with João Paulo Vidal. His first start with that team would be at the season opener at California. He started in 14th, and due to the abnormal amount of crashes in the race, he'd finish 11th, despite getting into a late race crash.

He'd finish 23rd at the Launch Energy Motopark in his second start of the year, but his true highlight of the season was in the Independent's Trophy only race, at the 2014 Grand Prix of Gravis City, where he'd win after starting third, and in the Grand Prix itself he'd end in 23rd. His home race in São Paulo would see his first points finish since California, finishing 20th and bringing one point home. In his last scheduled run for the Independent's Trophy, he'd get his worse result of the year, a 27th place in what arguably was the worst car of the whole weekend.

Personal Life
Gabriel is married to retired NAAC champion Julia Ashcroft, they started their relationship in 2006 and were married in 2009. They have one son, Lucas, born in September of 2017.

He is known to be extremely outspoken, openly insulting other drivers regardless of the situation, generally officials are aware of his behavior and don't act on his outbursts as much as they would because he ends up dying by his sword more often than not.