Nelson Piquet, a three-time F1 champion is under fire after making controversial remarks about the Brazilian President
Brazilian prosecutors have lodged an investigation into three-time Formula One champion Nelson Piquet after he was filmed wishing for the death of president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Piquet is a staunch supporter of outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro, who narrowly lost to Da Silva in the recently concluded Presidential elections in Brazil. Piquet was one of the thousands of protesters who took to the streets to claim that they don’t accept the results, which were confirmed by Brazil’s top electoral authorities.
Piquet is being investigated after a video went viral in which the format F1 champion and another person can be seen wishing death for the new President. In the video, Piquet says, “it is Lula in the cemetery,” in a reference to da Silva, who held the presidency between 2003-10. Piquet and the person who recorded the video are expected to testify before Brazil’s federal police. Piquet has not yet made any comments about the decision to investigate him.
Nelson Piquet has often been under fire for his notorious behaviour
This is not the first time that former champion Nelson Piquet is surrounded by a cloud of controversy. Earlier this year, he was seen making racist slurs referring to Lewis Hamilton in an interview. Piquet was speaking in November last year to Motorsport Talk’s Ricardo Oliveira, in Portuguese, about Hamilton’s clash with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen at the British Grand Prix in 2021, which ended with the Dutch driver going off the track and suffering a major impact with the barriers. The Brazilian used a racist term in the interview, which went viral on social media.
The video of the interview was picked up by Brazilian media including CNN, which reported his words as he referred to the incident. It included an epithet that can be translated as the N-word. Piquet was condemned for his statements by many in the F1 circle including FIA, teams like Mercedes and drivers like Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton himself.
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