Nelson Piquet

Nelson Piquet - The Forgotten Racist Champion

Whenever lists of the "greatest" drivers are put together one man who never seems to figure is 3 times World Champion Nelson Piquet. I thought it worth giving a little biog of the man and then maybe discussing why someone as successful as Piquet rarely gets the credit he probably deserves as a multiple World Champion.

Early Years

Piquet was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1952 Nelson Souto Maior. Piquet was his Mother's maiden name and he used this at the start of his racing career to hide his racing life from his family. Like many F1 drivers Piquet started in karts and then progressed onto Formula Super Vee in Brazil. Moving to Europe, in 1978 he was BP Super Visco British Formula 3 Champion, taking 8 wins and breaking Jackie Stewart's record for most wins in a season. At the time the British F3 championship was a major stepping stone to an F1 drive. Amongst Piquet's peer group that season was F1's nearly man Derek Warwick as well as other future F1 drivers such as Chico Serra, Tiff Needell and Elio de Angelis. Also in 1978, Piquet got his first experience of F1 driving for Ensign, a BS Fabrications entered McLaren M23 and eventually finding himself at the team that would make his reputation, Brabham, alongside Niki Lauda & John Watson. At the Canadian Grand Prix Piquet finished 11th with Lauda and Watson both retiring.

Grand Prix Career

Brabham

In 1979 Watson left to join McLaren and Piquet became Brabham's 2nd driver. Piquet's first season wasn't exactly spectacular but the move to the Alfa Romeo V12 engine was very problematic for Brabham. He ended the season with only 3 points, from a 4th at the Dutch Grand Prix but what probably defined his career was his elevation to team leader when Niki Lauda walked away from F1 at the Canadian Grand prix half way through practice.

1980, provided with Gordon Murray's simple but effective BT49 design and with super reliable Cosworth power, Piquet showed his true colours. He opened the season with a 2nd in Argentina, behind Champion to be Alan Jones, and won his first race at Long Beach. Two more wins that season, at the Dutch & Italian races, saw Piquet push Jones for the title until his car broke in Canada whilst leading the race and his title challenge was over.

With sliding skirts banned in 1981 the ever inventive Gordon Murray circumnavigated the rules by introducing a pneumatic ride height system which lowered the car down onto the track during the race recovering most of the lost down force the sliding skirts had generated. Piquet won the 3rd race of the season in Argentina and the following race at Imola. The technical advantage Murray's suspension system offered is exemplified by Hector Rebaque's 4th place at this race in the sister car. Piquet won one more race that season, in Germany. With the Williams team drivers fighting each other, and the appalling reliability of the turbo charged Renaults and Ferraris Piquet was able to take the title with only 50 points, beating Carlos Reutemann by a single point.

piqu_brab_1981_470313.jpg


1982 was a season of transition for Brabham as they moved to BMW turbo power. Put under pressure to use the BMW engine, Piquet suffered the ignominy of failing to qualify the turbo car in Detroit but bounced back in Canada to take his only win of the season.

1983 was Piquet second Championship winning season. The turbo cars were now very much in the ascendency in F1 and Brabham's main rivals were the Ferrari and Renault machines. Rivals such as Williams and Lotus had to wait until the middle & end of the season to get their hands on turbo engines so had to feed on the crumbs left as the unreliable turbo cars expired. Piquet only managed 3 wins to Prost's 4 but took the title by 2 points as the Renault team hit reliability problems (and internal divisions between Prost and team manager Gerard Larousse) toward the end of the season.

The end at Brabham the start at Williams

The next 2 seasons saw Piquet take only 3 wins as, although the Brabham was very fast, it struggled with huge reliability problems and for 1986 Piquet moved across to Williams to partner Nigel Mansell. Piquet's career at Williams started on a high, winning his home race in Brazil. 3 more wins that season saw Piquet placed 3rd in the drivers Championship behind Prost and Mansell.

piqu_will_monz_1986_470150.jpg


1987 was Piquet 3rd Championship success taking 3 wins. The season is probably best remembered for the collapse in the relationship between Piquet and Mansell, & Mansell's epic win at Silverstone after an unplanned tyre stop. Mansell's season, and title challenge, came to an abrupt end with a crash in practice for the Japanese Grand Prix but 12 points behind Piquet at that stage it is unlikely he would have taken the title.

The Lotus Years

For 1988 Piquet moved to Lotus and took Honda's turbo engines with him leaving Williams to struggle with Judd power. However, the Lotus car was pretty poor compared to the similarly powered McLaren machine whose drivers, Prost and Senna, won all but one of that years races between them. Piquet managed a lowly 22 points and finished 6 in the WDC never finishing higher than 3rd. In 1989 Lotus lost their Honda turbo engines, ironically, having to use Judd engines as Williams had done. Piquet's career looked to be on the slide, he was 8th in the WDC with two 4th place finishes his best result.

Benetton Bound

Piquet's move to Benetton in 1990 created some surprise in the F1 fraternity and there were rumours he was on a bonus system based on how many points he scored. Whatever the motivation, Piquet surprised everyone with regular top 6 finishes and he won the last two races in Japan and Australia to secure 3rd in the Championship table. Piquet managed 1 more win in 1991 at the Canadian Grand prix before finally calling it a day.

He had entered 207 Grand Prix and won 23 of them. He managed 24 pole positions, 23 fastest laps and, during a period of giants in F1 terms (Prost, Senna, Mansell, Rosberg etc.) won 3 World Drivers Championships, one of only 8 drivers to do this, a list which includes Fangio, Brabham, Stewart, Lauda, Prost, Senna and Schumacher – pretty esteemed company.

1991-piquet-benetton-b191-canada.jpg


Thank you for sticking with this, I appreciate it is a rather lengthy "summary".

Conclusion - well, mine anyway

So why isn't Piquet remembered as one of the true "greats". In some respects maybe because wasn't a spectacular driver but he had moments of brilliance. He would play the percentages, take points when they were available and win his titles more by attrition and stealth than with flamboyance. He had a significant car advantage in 1981 which may have made his Championship look easy, but was this advantage any greater than Mansell's in 1992, a Championship win many think well deserved, almost certainly not. Also, he wasn't the most personable character which probably didn't endear him to F1 fans and two incidents at Williams didn't help his cause. Firstly, his move to Lotus with Honda engines left Williams very much "in the lurch" in 1988 and, secondly, in an interview with Playboy magazine he was very outspoken about Nigel Mansell, British F1's golden boy, going so far as to insult his wife.

I would like to see Piquet get more credit for his achievements in F1. He wasn't a Senna or a Prost but he beat them both. He wasn't a Schumacher, but then who else is?
 
Hello friends RasputinLives and teabagyokel ,

thanks for the warm welcome.

Re-reading my post I noticed some flaws, missing links between sentences and some key information missing. Sorry, I didn't review it before publishing :(

I'm from Brazil and I have been discussing the 80's and 90's F1 a lot lately. BTW I stopped watching it a couple of years ago, it is waaaaaaay too boring for those who, like me, watched the exciting 70's + 80's, and some 90's races.

Oddly enough I keep finding a lot of misunderstanding about Piquet's carrer, specially on british media. Since we didn't have internet back then, we from BR did not know the rest of the world's opinion, and we were (obviously) fueled by the TV GLOBO pair of commentors (Reginaldo Leme and Galvão Bueno) and a few writers from other medias outlets. At the same time we had exclusive (no kidding... :D) interviews of Piquet, Fittipaldi and Senna, which helped us understanding what was going on overseas on their own words.


I find it particularly funny that the Brits rate Mansell above Piquet. 'Funny' because I believe this understanding is clearly fueled by patriotist sentiments and by what happened in 86 and 87. And also because of what happened after Imola '87, until the end of that season.

But I don't want to offend anyone, I just want to contribute with information of BR drivers that might be unknown for general public.

Best regards from Brazil!
 
Welcome Gaucho, good to read another perspective on Piquet. I think he definitely suffered from a xenophobic attitude in the English press, including some of the specialist press. The fact that he didn't care about them, and didn't make much effort to put the other side of the story, certainly won him no favours.

His time at Brabham coincided with their most innovative, effective and successful period. Even then, there was a lot more warmth towards Alan Jones and John Watson, more straightforward and archetypal racing drivers, and there was suspicion of foreigners with their supposedly tricky ways. The FISA-FOCA war was essentially England vs France (Renault) and Italy (Ferrari), and while Brabham were on the FOCA side of course, funding came from Italy, and a Brazilian was winning races in cars of occasionally questionable legality.

We don't hear much about those drives, however, as the 1986-87 seasons seem to have become the defining period in the Piquet narrative. This is a shame, as I would argue Nelson had already done his best work before moving to Williams. The cars of the early Eighties were very hard to drive, including physically, with a furious pace of development of engines, tyres and aerodynamics. So, as the only driver to win more than one title in the period, and being denied a likely treble by shocking reliability in '82, there is ample evidence of pace, stamina, racecraft and technical insight for those who are willing to see it.
 
@everyone: you can find a very very accurate narrative of Nelson's days in Williams (86 and 87) on this thread:
Williams F1 - The All Time Greatest Williams Drivers 2

I really enjoyed reading it (read it today 1st time), the author looked very keen on the details of each race, the drama, the emotions, the behind-the-pits stories, etc. Completely non-biased. I can safely say this is the best reading of those Williams days I had over the last ~10 years or more.


Galahad : thanks for your words. Agreed with you, specially on the years before Williams (79~85). By 82 Brabham was very dissatisfied with the development of BWM turbo, and Piquet was the main responsible to keeping it up (see Gordon Murray's interview here: interview-gordon-murray---the-making-of-another-br).

Cheers

Gaucho
 
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If I recall correctly, he is the only driver to twice win the title in a non-Constructors title winning car.

I think he remains overshadowed not only by Anglophone drivers, but by the far more media-friendly and charismatic countryman who followed him.

I suspect the heroism then martyrdom of Senna counts against Piquet as well, since that comparison won't go away.
 
How fitting that Piquet's favorite race is approaching. :D

8 retirements at the Principality.

Yeah.... he lost an easy lead in 1981 due to poor judgement when lapping Tambay (some say Tambay should have allowed him to pass) and at same time had a very very good race there in 1987, a few weeks after the Imola accident, when noone expected him to perform well.

There is a curious story of Nelson sleeping with princess Stephanie before the 1981 qualifying session: Você Sabia? - Nelson Piquet e o caso com a princesa de Mônaco
(in PT-BR :D)

It seems Prost did the same in 1984, according to Lauda: 'Last night I caught Stephanie of Monaco'
 
Hi Gaucho, not sure if you have read my original post about Nelson but I hoped to try and redress the anti-Piquet feeling many felt when he was up against Alan Jones and Nigel Mansell. Nobody wins three World Championships if they are a mug and Nelson certainly wasn't.

In Niki Lauda's autobiography he rated Piquet as the fastest driver he ever raced against and this is a man who ran two seasons with Alain Prost. I think that says enough.
 
Hi Gaucho, not sure if you have read my original post about Nelson but I hoped to try and redress the anti-Piquet feeling many felt when he was up against Alan Jones and Nigel Mansell. Nobody wins three World Championships if they are a mug and Nelson certainly wasn't.

In Niki Lauda's autobiography he rated Piquet as the fastest driver he ever raced against and this is a man who ran two seasons with Alain Prost. I think that says enough.


Hello FB,

yes I did. It is a good summary, but I like to bring into the discussion the little know facts, the behind-the-scenes, the reasons and opinions almost noone knows, in summary, the information that not taken into account by whatever reason .

If I was going to do a BIO of him, I would written it completely different :)

I'm not saying yours is wrong or incomplete, but that is the standard info you find in almost every season review website.

There is a ton of info on his Brabham's years that is largely ignored, and I understand this is the reason he is not much popular (also, he did not make friends with the media and fans, was outspoken and had a playboy life away from the circuits, which seemed to enrage the general public opinion towards him).

Let me know if you want to dig deep into every season or if we are good with what we have :)

Cheers!
 
Well, if it's digging stuff up we' re talking about... you wouldn't have any info about what went on aboard Nelson's boat when Prost sayed there for a few days towards tail-end of the 1983 season?

From reading accounts of the 1983 season there was a bit of a story that broke in the media at around the time Prost and Piquet were fighting for the title at the end of 1983. Apparently Prost was going some promotional work for Renault in an area where Nelson's boat was anchored so he called him up to ask about any hotels in the area. So Nelson invited him to stay over in his boat for a few days instead of going to the trouble of booking hotel rooms.

Although both men when subsequently asked about it remained tight-lipped, there appeared to have been some sort of... partying going on onboard that boat. ;)

Was there ever any detail in the brazilian press about that story?
 
And the FIA immediately show their commitment to stamp out all forms of racism and discrimination by issuing a vague statement and doing precisely **** all else.

Hands up if anyone is really shocked by that?
 
Perhaps Red Bull should not have Kelly in the pit lane as Max will be asked whether he agrees with her Dad's views about what he said
 
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It's telling also that the reporter, the publication involved, and everyone who read/listened to it it never mentioned a thing.
You know the source is Brazilian and Hamilton appears to be more Brazilian than Piquet because Hamilton idolised Senna whilst Piquet advocates Bolsarrano the corrupt b$tard
 
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