Piquet insults Hamilton and uses homophobic expression in new interview excerpt

Former driver Nelson Piquet, 69, received criticism again after releasing a note justifying the use of the term “neguinho” to refer to Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton, 37. Another excerpt from the interview -published last year, and that went viral earlier this week – was released. In the video, Piquet again uses the term racist and a homophobic expression.

Piquet offends Finland’s Keke Rosberg, the 1982 champion and father of Hamilton’s former Mercedes rival Nico Rosberg. “Keke? He was a piece of shit. He had no value. It’s just like his son [Nico]won a championship, the neguinho [Hamilton] should have been ‘giving more ass’ back then and it was kind of bad,” he said.

The excerpt was reproduced by the portal Grande Premio, and the interview was originally granted in November last year to a YouTube channel called Motorsports Talks – which took the video off the air. In the first moment of the interview, Piquet calls Hamilton “little black” twice.

The speech came when the former driver gave his opinion on the crash of the seven-time champion with Max Verstappen at the 2021 British Grand Prix. The Dutch driver is dating the former driver’s daughter, Kelly. On Thursday afternoon (30), Piquet justified the use of the term in a statement.

“What I said was poorly thought out, and I don’t defend it, but I will clarify that the term used is one that has been widely and historically used colloquially in Brazilian Portuguese as a synonym for ‘cara’ or ‘person’ and was never intended to to offend,” he wrote.

After the episode, Hamilton asked that ‘old voices’ no longer have space in Formula 1. “Why do we keep giving space to these old voices?”, he asked. “We shouldn’t give these people a platform. They talk about our sport and we try to go in a completely different direction, it’s not representative.”