A Brazilian court has fined former Formula One star Nelson Piquet for making homophobic and racist remarks about Lewis Hamilton.
Back in June 2022, Piquet faced massive backlash from Formula One fans after his November 2021 interview on a Brazillian podcast resurfaced.
In the aforementioned sit-down, the 70-year-old driver made racist and homophobic comments in Portuguese while discussing Hamilton’s British Grand Prix race against Max Verstappen – which resulted in a first-lap crash.
According to a report from Sky Sports, Piquet said: “The [racist term] must have been giving a lot of a** at the time. He was pretty bad.” In response to the pushback from fans and the sporting community, Piquet issued a statement apologising for his actions. “What I said was ill-thought-out, and I make no defence for it, but I will clarify that the term used is one that has widely and historically been used colloquially in Brazilian Portuguese as a synonym for ‘guy’ or ‘person’ and was never intended to offend,” the retired driver said.