Nelson Piquet
Nelson Piquet won three Formula 1 world championships and was, by the technical assessment of most engineers who worked with him, one of the most precise and technically acute drivers the sport has produced. He was also one of the most contentious personalities in the paddock — deliberately provocative, famously difficult, and entirely indifferent to the diplomatic expectations of elite sport.
Piquet was born in Rio de Janeiro into a sporting family — his father was a minister in the Brazilian government and a tennis enthusiast who initially discouraged motorsport. Piquet pursued it anyway, moving to England to develop his career in Formula Ford and Formula 3 before graduating to Formula 1. He changed his surname from Souto Maior to Piquet — his mother's maiden name — partly to prevent his father discovering he was racing.
His driving style was notable for its smoothness and intelligence rather than its spectacle. He was particularly skilled at tyre management and at extracting information from a car during practice that he could translate into race-winning setup decisions. His three championships were achieved with different teams under different technical regulations, demonstrating an adaptability that the statistics do not fully convey. His 1983 title, won on the final lap of the final race of the season, came after one of the most intensely contested championship battles of the turbo era.
His personal conduct generated controversy throughout his career and, in one case, long after it. His verbal exchanges with Ayrton Senna — a rivalry that took on cultural dimensions beyond the track — were conducted with a contempt that Piquet rarely bothered to conceal. His son Nelson Piquet Jr. competed in Formula 1 and Formula E, and it was in the context of his son's career that the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix scandal — in which Piquet Jr. deliberately crashed on team orders to trigger a safety car for Renault's Fernando Alonso — eventually came to light. Piquet Sr.'s role in revealing the scandal, and his subsequent legal battles with Renault, added a final chapter to a career that had never been short of incident.
6 Things You Might Not Know
Piquet's father, a Brazilian government minister and tennis enthusiast, disapproved of motorsport. To prevent him discovering his racing activities, Piquet competed under his mother's maiden name rather than his father's surname. The deception lasted long enough for his career to become established and difficult to reverse. He kept the name Piquet permanently.
Piquet and Senna's relationship combined genuine sporting rivalry with personal contempt that both expressed publicly. Piquet made comments about Senna that went considerably beyond sporting competition, and Senna responded with equal intensity. The rivalry reflected a real difference in how they understood racing — Piquet as a technical problem to be solved, Senna as a spiritual calling — as much as personal animosity.
Nelson Piquet Jr. was instructed by Renault team management to crash deliberately during the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, triggering a safety car that benefited teammate Fernando Alonso. Alonso won the race. When Piquet Jr. was dropped by the team the following year, the Piquet family revealed the arrangement — triggering an FIA investigation that resulted in the team's management being banned from the sport.
The 1987 world championship was decided at the last round, the Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide. Piquet needed only to finish in the points to secure the title over Nigel Mansell. He did so — not without difficulty. The achievement of winning a championship on countback after the final race of the season, against an opponent who had been faster for much of the year, demonstrates the accumulative intelligence that characterised his career.
Piquet retained a serious interest in karting throughout his life and beyond his F1 career. He has competed in karting events, supported his children's motorsport careers, and maintained the view that karting is the most technically pure form of racing. Several of his children have competed in motorsport at various levels, continuing a family tradition that extends well beyond his own three championships.
Piquet was skilled at the political dimensions of Formula 1 in ways that his public image as a provocateur sometimes obscured. He negotiated contracts carefully, understood team dynamics with precision, and deployed his provocative public persona partly as a competitive tool — unsettling rivals while maintaining his own equilibrium. Colleagues who worked closely with him describe a more calculating intelligence than the outspoken exterior suggested.