Nelson Piquet has been ordered to pay £780,000 by a Brazilian court as a result of racist and homophobic comments he made at Lewis Hamilton.
The three-time world champion, whose last success came in 1987 whilst at Williams, has an association with Max Verstappen due to his daughter dating the Dutchman. Piquet has been outspoken about Hamilton previously, taking aim at him following an incident at the British Grand Prix in 2021.
Hamilton and Verstappen, then embroiled in a heated title battle, crashed on the opening lap at Silverstone, which saw the Red Bull driver crash out and end up in hospital. The incident divided opinion, but Piquet used the situation to berate Hamilton, whom he called a "n*****".
At the time Hamilton claimed there was no place for such comments in the sport and called for such individuals not to be given a platform. A court in Brazil clearly agrees and has ordered the former Brabham driver to pay $953,050 as a result of his comments.
Hamilton said previously: "These old voices are, you know, whether subconsciously or consciously, do not agree that people like me, for example, should be in a sport like this, do not agree women should be here. Discrimination is not something we should be giving a platform. We need people to be bringing people together. We are all the same and the comments we are seeing are not helpful."
That was in response to Piquet's comments, which were said on a podcast in his homeland. He said: "The n******* put the car in the wrong way and didn’t let the other driver swerve. The n******* put the car in the wrong way on the corner, it’s because you don’t know the curve.
"It’s a very high curve, there is no way to pass two cars and there’s no way you can put the car aside. He did [Verstappen] dirty. His luck was that only the other one was gone."
A month after those comments surfaced Piquet made similar remarks when mocking Nico Rosberg's 2016 world championship. The German pipped Hamilton, then his team-mate at Mercedes, to the title in the final race. Piquet also took aim at Keke Rosberg, Nico's father, whom he raced against.
He said: "Keke? He was a s***! Zero value. His son [Nico] won the championship. The n*****’was [more focused on] giving a** at that time. He was kinda bad."
Piquet did apologise to the Hamilton and said his comments had been mistranslated. The British driver was, last June, awarded honorary Brazilian citizenship.
