Mike Doodson reckoned Nelson Piquet looked “a little haggard” at
Goodwood, but I thought the three-time World Champion looked pretty good
on his 61 years when he made a star appearance at the Festival of Speed
this summer past. There were hints of grey around the temples and a few
extra lines around the eyes, but life has been good to the Brazilian
since his racing career wound up 20 years ago and it shows.
Piquet returned to Goodwood at the behest of BMW, which was marking
the 30th anniversary of its one and only Formula 1 World Championship
success. Back in 1983, Gordon Murray and his small design team at
Brabham endured four months of grinding all-nighters to produce the
dart-like BT52, following the FIA’s shock decision the previous November
to overhaul its rulebook. Ground-effect aero suction was out, as was
Murray’s well-advanced BT51 – and the flat-bottomed era of Formula 1
began.
How Murray created one of the most iconic – and stunningly beautiful –
F1 cars from a starting point of bleak despair has gone into legend,
and indeed it’s a story we revisited in the May issue this year. The
needle-nosed ‘dragster’ was mated to BMW’s potent production-based
four-cylinder turbo, and the combination proved the class act in a
botched year when other teams resorted to B, C and even D versions of
hurried designs.
A win for Piquet and the straight-out-of-the-box BT52 in Rio offered
Murray and his team instant gratification, although a mixture of
unreliability and misfortune meant they didn’t win again until
September. But a late run of success – boosted (literally) by a witch’s
brew of WWII rocket fuel – allowed Piquet and Brabham to snatch the
title from under the Gallic noses of Alain Prost, Renault and a furious
Elf. Rumblings of illegality still tremor to this day, but the results
stand, as does the second of Piquet’s three world titles.
The German giant has every reason to be proud of its 1983
achievement, especially as it failed to repeat such success as an engine
supplier to Williams between 2000 and 2005, and during its subsequent
(short) spell as a standalone team.
Thus, as we reported in our August issue a few months ago, BMW’s
classic division pulled out the stops to restore a BT52 in time for a
happy reunion with Piquet at Goodwood this year. And with Nelson so
rarely available for interview on this side of the world, we immediately
drew a big target on his back.
Doodson was the obvious candidate to pin Nelson down, given that he’d
been that rare case of a British journalist who remained close to one
of the sport’s most controversial characters, particularly during his
‘dastardly’ period as ‘saintly’ Nigel Mansell’s team-mate at Williams.
Nigel Roebuck, incidentally, also got along with Piquet, but would never
claim to have been as close to Nelson as ‘Dood’.
Now the question was timing. Mike had already missed the
accreditation deadline for the Festival and tracking down Nelson for
anything more than a quick word meant we’d need help. Enter BMW UK’s
star of a PR man, Martin Harrison.
It was Festival Friday and I’d already met Nelson during our
recording of the Festival podcast. As we’d finished I tried to explain
to Piquet that Mike was here purposefully to see him – but the Brazilian
had looked at me blankly, said “yes” (even though I hadn’t actually
asked him a direct question) and wandered off. My pitch could have gone
better.
Piquet was now having lunch with his family and friends, so I hurried
over to BMW’s stand near the cricket pitch, caught up with Martin and
Mike and told them our only hope was to catch the great man now, before
he headed off for another run up the hill in the BT52. Together we
dashed back to the drivers’ lounge where Nelson had finished eating. He
turned around, immediately spotted Mike, cracked that familiar
gap-toothed grin, laughed and launched into a barrage of good-natured
abuse towards his old friend. From that moment on, I knew the interview
was in the bag.
As the busy lounge emptied and drivers headed out for more runs on
the hill, Nelson and Mike sat reminiscing for more than an hour, Martin
and I hovering close by, earwigging on a conversation over which the
veteran journalist was valiantly trying to keep some semblance of
control.
Piquet’s scatter-gun and broken-English delivery makes it tricky to
hold his attention on one subject for any length of time, but if anyone
could make sense of Nelson’s stream of consciousness it was Mike! Sure
enough, they parted with handshakes, back slaps and smiles after a happy
reunion – and a fresh interview recorded. You can read the result in
the December issue, on sale now.
Piquet was always a bit ‘Marmite’ for racing enthusiasts, whatever
their nationality, and sure enough this new interview will divide
opinion. He dismisses his old Brabham team-mate Riccardo Patrese as a
“crying boy”, praises Niki Lauda for what he learnt from him during
their time together as team-mates and speaks of his “shock” when Nelson
Jr told him about crashing on purpose at Singapore 2008, in the Renault
race-fixing controversy that became known as ‘Crashgate’.
Back in September 2012, Pat Symonds told
Motor Sport that
Nelson Jr himself had suggested the idea in Singapore. At the time, a
fellow editor of a rival magazine accused me of repeating a libel given
that the Piquets had won compensation from Renault following the
acrimony of a courtcase. He had a point, but I’d felt it was important
for Symonds, who was banned from F1 for five years for his part in the
affair, to have his say. We heard nothing from neither Renault nor the
Piquets following publication of the article.
So now we print Nelson Sr’s version of events. As he states, he
wasn’t in Singapore to witness events first-hand, and claims he first
discovered the truth a week later when he spoke to his son on the phone.
“I asked him what happened when he shunted the car,” he tells Mike.
“[Nelson Jr] said it was all programmed and he had been told to do it. I
was quite shocked: ‘How could you do something like that?’ I asked him.
He said, ‘Look, you should know what the pressure is like here. They
told me that if I wanted to be part of the team, I had to do what they
want.”
As we know, the story emerged in 2009 when Renault jettisoned Piquet
Jr – and Nelson Sr “went to Max [Mosley] and told him the story”. As he
tells Doodson in our interview, “I told Nelson he would never drive in
F1 again, and either he could go easy, or we could get some money from
Renault. And he said, ‘OK, let’s go and fight’.”
Everything about this story is grubby and unseemly. In truth, no one
emerged untarnished one way or another – including Piquet Sr. And
certainly no one, including Mike Doodson, would claim Nelson is a saint,
this new interview reminding us why on more than one occasion.
For some, the controversy of ‘Crashgate’ will forever overshadow how
Piquet is remembered, despite the fact he cleared his family’s name in
court. Whatever, it seems unfair that a three-time World Champion should
be defined entirely by an episode that occurred long after he retired.
As a driver, Piquet is often underrated despite his title successes.
In motor racing’s ‘Fab Four’ of the 1980s, he was perhaps George
Harrison to Alain Prost’s Paul McCartney and Ayrton Senna’s John Lennon
(yes, that makes Mansell Ringo!). In recent years, George has received
the credit he was long overdue – and now, we believe, it’s Nelson’s
turn.
More than anything, this interview reminds us how hard Nelson worked,
right from his Formula 3 days, to be a winner. As those who worked
closely with him maintain, he was never afraid to put in the hours on
car preparation, set-up and testing to give himself the best opportunity
to make the most of his blistering speed.
And respect is due for a man who still had the fire to take on the
Indy 500 and Le Mans once his F1 career dried up – especially as he
suffered the worst injuries of his life when practicing for the former.
Nothing about Piquet is cut and dried. As you can read in Mike’s
article, he can still be obnoxious and crass. He can also be very funny.
And perhaps most importantly, among the stream of memories Nelson
Piquet also offers some insight into what made him a genuine ‘frontman’
of F1 history.
Just don’t expect him to react if you judge him. When it comes to
what you, me or anyone else might think, he couldn’t care less.
