Hugo Valente

Valtente secured a factory drive with the Lada Sport Rosneft team for 2016. It was a tough season as Valente was unable to make the podium, unlike his teammates Gabriele Tarquini and Nick Catsburg who both took victories. Valente's best results were two fourth place finishes in Morocco and Russia. After scoring points consistently for the first half of the season, Valente would only finish once more in the points across the final four rounds including five retirements. This left him in 12th place overall, three places behind Tarquini and five behind Catsburg. At the end of the season it was announced that Lada would be pulling out of the World Touring Car Championship, leaving Valente without a drive for 2017.

Valente made his debut in the new for 2015, TCR International Series, at the penultimate round in Thailand. Driving with Campos Racing in their Opel Astra, Valente did not finish the first race of the weekend, although he was still classified. Valente started the second race from pole position as a result of it being a reversed grid race. However Valente would retire from this race as well.

Valente would stay the WTCC full-time in 2013 season, joining Campos Racing alongside Fernando Monje in a SEAT León WTCC. The start of his season was delayed until the Race of Hungary when Campos introduced their second car. He skipped the Russian and Portuguese rounds of the championship and his car was taken over by European Touring Car Cup driver Nikolay Karamyshev.

Valente made his debut in the WTCC at the 2012 FIA WTCC Race of China, driving the SUNRED SR León 1.6T previously driven in the 2012 season by Tiago Monteiro and Hiroki Yoshimoto. He qualified 23rd for the race with the only SR León on the grid. His car was found to be over-boosting later on in Q1 but his best time was set prior to the change being made so his grid slot was unaffected. His best result of the weekend was fifteenth in race one, but he was later dropped to sixteenth in the classification when he was one of five drivers issued with a 30-second penalty for cutting a chicane to avoid a separate incident.

After taking a sabbatical in 2011, Valente returned to racing for 2012 in the French SEAT León Supercopa. He led the championship going into the final round at the Circuit Paul Ricard but ultimately lost out to Jimmy Antunes in the final race.

For 2009 Valente moved into car racing and into the Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 series with SG Formula. He finished the season 24th in the standings with a best result of 8th at the Nürburgring. He stayed in the series for 2010, moving to the new Tech 1 Racing team alongside Arthur Pic and Aaro Vainio. He scored a single podium finish, of second place, on the first weekend at Motorland Aragón and he went on to finish the season 12th on 28 points.

Hugo Valente (born 17 June 1992) is a French former auto racing driver. He raced in the World Touring Car Championship for SUNRED Engineering, Campos Racing and the Lada factory team having made his debut in the series at the 2012 FIA WTCC Race of China. For 2017, he made the switch to the TCR International Series, where part way through the season he announced his retirement from motorsport. He was born in Choisy-le-Roi.