John Paul Christian Menard (born August 21, 1980) is an American semi-retired professional stock car racing driver who currently competes full-time in the Trans-Am Series, driving the No.

Menard's racing career began at the age of eight when he won the Briggs Junior Karting Class Championship in his native Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

[2] He borrowed Bryan Reffner's Late Model for a week winning his heat race and placing around fourth in the feature.

During his rookie season in 2001, he earned a pole and victory at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, finishing ninth in points.

The 2002 season saw Menard compete in ReMax Challenge (two poles, seventh in points), SCCA Trans-Am (one front-row start, four top-10 finishes), Grand Am Cup (victories at Fontana and Phoenix) and the NASCAR Southwest Tour.

He capped his season in the latter series with a last-lap pass of veteran Ken Schrader for the Phoenix victory.

Later that year, he started on the pole at Winchester, Indiana, and then scored his first ARCA victory at Talladega Superspeedway.

15 car part-time for DEI, Menard scored his first top-10 finish in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series by coming in seventh place at the Golden Corral 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

After the fall race at Charlotte, in which Menard and Tony Stewart made contact on pit road, a feud between the drivers ensued; Stewart had driven for John Menard in the Indy Racing League's early years.

In 2008, Menard won his first Sprint Cup Series pole at Daytona International Speedway in early July and remained in the top 35 in owner's points for the entire season.

At Talladega in the fall, Menard had the best run of his career leading laps and coming home with a strong second-place finish.

At the end of the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, Menard was the only driver to not score a top 10 finish who ran all of the races.

The following race at Atlanta Motor Speedway Menard posted his second highest career Cup series finish with a fifth place showing followed by a few more top 20s.

It appeared that Menard was to blame, but footage captured by a fan showed that Owen Kelly was at fault.

[3] On July 31, 2011, Menard won his first and only Sprint Cup race in his 167th start, in the Brickyard 400 at the prestigious Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

With four to go, he regained the lead and held off Jeff Gordon, the winner of the inaugural Brickyard 400 in the final laps, having enough fuel to do so.

He also joins Trevor Bayne, Regan Smith, David Ragan, and Marcos Ambrose as first-time winners in the 2011 season.

"[6] In 2014 Menard scored 13 top tens (a career high) and held a chase spot for most of the regular season but two consecutive 18th place finishes at Atlanta and Richmond (final race of the regular season) dropped him out of contention.

He made the Chase for the first time in his career mostly because he had only one DNF (a blown engine in Texas), grabbing the final spot by 17 points over Aric Almirola.

He was eliminated in the first round, but with Matt Kenseth's two-race suspension, Menard passed him and finished in a career-best of 14th in the standings.

Also in August 2015, Menard took the checkers at Road America, holding off Blake Koch and Ryan Blaney for his third Xfinity Series win.

To start of 2017, Menard survived wrecks in the Daytona 500 and brought home a 5th place finish after a few cars ran out of gas.

In the Coke Zero 400, Menard ran up front late and came home 3rd, barely behind Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Clint Bowyer.

[7] On June 30, 2018, almost 10 years to the day, Menard got his second ever NASCAR Cup Series Pole Award at Chicagoland Speedway for the Overton's 400.

On July 12, 2019, Menard announced he had a contract for the 2020 season, indicating that he plans to stay with Wood Brothers.

Paul Menard doesn't have any social media and he chooses to stay away from it because "it is nothing good and there's so much more to life than looking at other people's lives behind a screen.