Nelson Piquet used both racist and homophobic language to describe Sir Lewis Hamilton, new footage has shown, Metro news reports.
According to the report, the former Formula 1 world champion Nelson Piquet was heavily condemned earlier this week after a video of the Brazilian using a racial slur while discussing Hamilton emerged.
But on Friday, the matter was escalated further after more footage of Piquet was revealed where he again used the same racial slur as well as a homophobic language while talking about Hamilton, his former teammate and world champion Nico Rosberg and Rosberg’s father Keke, himself a world champion who raced against Piquet in the 1980s.
On a Brazilian podcast, he said: ‘Keke? He was a s***! He’s worthless.
‘His son [Nico] won the championship. The ‘n*******’ was [more focused on] giving a** at that time. He was kinda bad.’
Nelson Piquet appears to be referring to the 2016 title battle where Nico Rosberg pipped Mercedes teammate Hamilton to become world champion.
His comments had already received widespread backlash from those within the F1 community and beyond, with reports suggesting that the three-time title winner has now been banned indefinitely from the F1 paddock.
Piquet had issued an apology to Hamilton but claimed he was not a racist and that his remarks had been mistranslated.
Lewis Hamilton Response To Nelson Piquet:
Lewis Hamilton reacting to the issue, took to his social media handle to respond to the racial abuse from former Formula 1 world champion Nelson Piquet by posting a series of powerful messages online.
The seven-time world champion is the most successful driver in the history of F1, but has fought against horrific racial abuse throughout his racing career from bigoted fans and senior figures in the sport.
Hamilton retorted with both humour and a powerfully salient statement on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon.
Responding to a fan whose original tweet read ‘What if Lewis Hamilton just tweeted ‘Who the f*** is Nelson Piquet?’ then closed twitter?’, Hamilton wrote: ‘Imagine.’
The 37-year-old then followed that up with a message in Portuguese reading ‘Let’s focus on changing the mindset,’ before posting a longer response in English.
‘It’s more than language,’ Hamilton wrote. ‘These archaic mindsets need to change and have no place in our sport. I’ve been surrounded by these attitudes and targeted my whole life. There has been plenty of time to learn. Time has come for action.’