Luiz Razia raced karts and Autocross in his native Brazil before moving up to Formula Renault 2.0 and Formula Three in 2005.
The next year he won the South American Formula Three championship. After that he followed the path of many Brazilian drivers before him by moving to Europe.
Razia raced in series for old Formula 3000 cars and scored three wins in the 2008 Euroseries 3000 championship. That led him to GP2, where he made his debut in the Asia Series with Arden.
His first year in the main series came in 2009 with Fisichella Motorsport, who he had driven for in the Euroseries. He scored his first point at the penutimate round at Monza, then followed it up with a win in the next race.
His 2010 campaign with Rapax began promisingly with six consecutive points scores. But he failed to score again until the final double header while team mate Pastor Maldonado put together a string of feature race wins that saw him claim the championship.
In 2011 Razia joined the new AirAsia team and ended the year winless again. But after returning to Arden he got 2012 off to a strong start by beating Davide Valsecchi to victory in Malaysia.
The pair duelled for the title throughout the year, Valsecchi forging ahead early on before Razia overcame his points lead with sprint race wins in Spain (twice) and Britain. Valsecchi fought back and with four races to go the pair were level on points.
A disastrous weekend in Italy for Razia handed Valsecchi the initiative, and in the penultimate race in Singapore Razia followed Valsecchi home and had to settle for the runner-up spot.
The pair had been team mates in GP2 in AirAsia and as test drivers at sister F1 team Lotus in 2011. Razia drove for them in practice sessions in China and Brazil.
In 2012 he tested for Force India and Toro Rosso. During pre-season testing in 2013 he was handed an F1 race seat with Marussia but the deal fell through and he was replaced by Jules Bianchi before the start of the season.