Joshua Dürksen is the first Paraguayan driver to compete in Formula 2—and the first to stand on the podium, including on the top step of it. Dürksen’s manager, Eduardo Sánchez, spoke exclusively to Pit Debrief about the challenges of creating a pathway into single-seaters, in a country where motorsport pathways are anything but conventional.
Creating a pathway that wasn’t readily available
While Paraguay is well known for its passion for football, rallying, and other sports, its presence in circuit racing is almost non-existent. Beyond a single karting track, the country has no full-sized racing circuit, no single-seater ladder, and no established pathway for young drivers. As a result, most children who start in karting transition straight into rallying. Joshua Dürksen was the rare exception.
Eduardo Sánchez began working with Dürksen during the driver’s second year in Formula 4. He describes Dürksen as an anomaly within Paraguayan motorsport, a strange, rare case, an astronaut to Paraguay.
Despite starting karting far later than most, at age 11, Dürksen forged a pathway the country had never seen before. After only three years in karting, he jumped directly into Formula 4. For Eduardo Sánchez — a devoted motorsport fan whose experience lay entirely in advertising — supporting Dürksen’s rise was uncharted territory, and a challenge of considerable scale.
“Okay, the first part is very important to understand that here in Paraguay doesn’t exist a category or an industry of single-seaters. We don’t have a circuit, a track, we don’t have anything. We only have a little track, karting track. That’s all. The guy starts, the little boy starts, Joshua starts when he is 11 years, very late for a karting driver. And then he made the jump directly to Formula 4. He only was three years here in karting. We don’t have a homologated karting track of FIA, nothing.
“So we don’t have an industry here about single-seaters. Football and rally are the biggest sports here. We have a lot of motorsport, but in another category. So a lot of drivers are directly to rally, so Joshua is a very, very strange case. So that is a big, big challenge for us. He is like an astronaut for us.
“My job, I was working with him like seven years now. I started after the second year he was in Formula 4. I’m a crazy lover of motorsport since I remember, and that’s all. And I’m an advertising manager from the last 20 years. I have a blog in Spain of motorsport in 2010, and that’s all. Then we know the family. I have some projects, some ideas when we discovered the guy here and the little children.”
Moving into single-seaters rather than rally is incredibly rare for Paraguay, so as a result, Dürksen is treated almost like a Formula 1 driver. Sánchez and Dürksen were left to essentially create a single-seater industry for the country, and in doing so, they also had to build an audience for it—an audience that now even includes the President. Although he cannot provide financial support, the President has chosen to offer strategic backing instead, a huge step in the right direction.
Opening doors for Paraguayan motorsport
Every piece of Dürksen’s journey into single-seaters has had to be created by Sánchez and Dürksen themselves. The sponsorship, the industry, the audience—all were built specifically for Paraguay. This has led to Dürksen becoming an extremely famous and well-known figure in the country. Sánchez even mentioned that he can no longer go out in public with Dürksen in Paraguay due to the attention he receives.
“It’s a very rare case in this country. So we take care like a Formula One driver here. We start to create the industry, create the audience of this. So now what he’s achieving is amazing, you know, for us, like a country. We have now a support of the president from the government with a strategic side because for a law, they cannot put money. And we don’t have the resources for how it spends, but this is this category. So everything we do, we make, we invent.
“So we invent the sponsorship. We invented the industry. We invent the audience here. Now a lot of people, you cannot go outside with Joshua because he’s very famous here. It’s a problem. I don’t, I only go with Joshua. I don’t go anywhere with him because it’s impossible.
After Dürksen’s swift jump into Formula 4, he began working with Ronald Reffel in a team-manager role. He then moved into FRECA with Arden Motorsport before making the biggest leap of his career: stepping straight from FRECA into Formula 2 alongside Kimi Antonelli, a landmark achievement for him and for Paraguayan motorsport.
“So he started very, very young, not so young, but he made the jump to Formula 4. Then, when we start to work with Ronald Reffel, who is a guy who was working with him in Formula 4, like a team manager, then the jump would go to FRECA with Arden Motorsport. And then we made the jump, the big jump with Antonelli, the crazy thing that we made here to make the jump to Formula 2.”
The pathway created for Paraguayans into Formula 2
Dürksen’s success has been carefully shaped by both himself and Eduardo Sánchez. While his achievements alone are already remarkable, they become even more striking when considering Sánchez’s background. With his professional experience rooted solely in commercial advertising, he has managed to channel his passion for motorsport into developing the knowledge and expertise needed to guide a driver to the international stage.
“I am a big fan of motorsports. You know. I saw the last race of Senna. You can imagine now. But my experience is more on the commercial side. So I am a big fan of advertisers. I was working in this the last 20 years. But this is all a creation that we made directly with Joshua. It’s a team with his family. That’s all. And obviously, Roman is helping a lot in the sporting side. So we make a very good team with him. So we can drive the different parts. Because he is very big. We don’t have the expertise here. Now the start is here.”
