On top of celebrating the win of Porsche in Sao Paulo on 30 November, the World Endurance Championship race hosted the final stage of the Michelin Best Driver program, a road safety program developed in conjunction with the FIA to address key road safety messages to students in Brazil.

The Michelin Best Driver program was designed to support the Michelin partnership of the FIA Action for Road Safety campaign and consisted of three different stages in Brazil:

-          A road show was held in seven cities and 15 universities of Brazil, where Michelin set up road safety events, in order to engage with students. In each university, Michelin and the FIA promoted the campaign through the use of the FIA 10 Golden Rules for safer motoring and the presence of a driving simulator to address two key Golden Rules: “Check your tyres” and “Pay attention (don’t text and drive)”.

Additionally, a talk show was organized to present the Best Driver program. Throughout the four months of the program and the 15 universities visited, Michelin engaged with a total of 27,000 students.

-          After each road safety event, the students were invited to set up a telematics system in their own car, in order to measure and evaluate their driving skills over a month.

More than 1,000 students took part in the challenge where each “incident” (speeding, excess braking, etc.) was monitored and the best performer of each university was able to win a weekend package to attend the WEC 6 Hours of Sao Paulo.

-          The 15 winners attended the race on 30 November, with several unique experiences such as the hot laps, the grid walk, the Michelin Workshop and a dinner hosted by the FIA Drivers' Commission President, Emerson Fittipaldi who announced the grand winner of the contest on Saturday evening.

Renata Marques, Project Manager of the Michelin Best Driver program, was thrilled by the success of the event: “Michelin is overwhelmed with the results of the Michelin Best Driver program.

In just over three months, we were able to establish a real discussion with students from across Brazil about road safety. Our dedicated Best Driver Facebook page reached 130,000 fans, the program was mentioned in several news shows and in total, the program reached more than 28 million Brazilians.

The FIA’s help was also a big added value for us, especially the message that President Jean Todt recorded to support the program and that was shown at each of our events”.

Eric Peixoto Barboza, the grand winner of the contest and the big prize, a Peugeot car, couldn’t believe his luck: “I'm so happy to have won the Michelin Best Driver program. I can’t believe I have driven 3,000 km (for a total of 83 hours of driving) without any incidents.

It is even more special for me as I was in a car accident a year ago and road safety is something that it is very important”.

The 23-year-old Brazilian from Salvador de Bahia added: “And to be honoured by Emerson Fittipaldi was just the icing on the cake”.

Following the success of the event, Michelin and the FIA are already looking at extending the program to other countries around the world.