Nelson Piquet breaks silence as Lewis Hamilton title under legal threat from Felipe Massa’ Nelson Piquet has revealed he was treated “like a dog” at Renault as he opens up about the Crashgate scandal which could see Lewis Hamilton stripped of his maiden title. Piquet has accepted he would not be part of a race-fixing scenario again but stressed he was bullied and put under pressure by bosses.
He claimed team chiefs thought he was “trash” which is why he revealed details of the saga a year later. Information about the incident only came to light in 2009, months after Hamilton was declared the world champion.
However, Bernie Ecclestone recently claimed FIA bosses knew about the incident but kept it a secret to maintain the sport’s integrity. It has led Massa to suggest he is seeking legal action over whether the result can be overturned 15 years later.
Renault faced a range of sanctions after it emerged Piquet had purposefully crashed at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix to help out team-mate Fernando Alonso.
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Nelson Piquet breaks silence as Lewis Hamilton title under legal threat from Felipe Massa
Breaking his silence, Piquet told the Pelas Pistas podcast: “Many people ask me if I would do it again, and of course, the answer is no. But to be at that age,, under that pressure and having nobody there with you, with the bullying, complaining, pressure and always being told: ‘this is your last chance’.
“You see your dream, which you spent your whole life going wrong, and I was the teammate who wasn’t as strong as Alonso, after Kovalainen. I stayed, and then they broke my contract and said: ‘Grosjean will take your place’.
“I said: ‘You can’t do that’ but they didn’t care and treated me like a dog. That’s when I said: ‘Ok, since you are kicking me out, thinking I am trash, we need to make everything clear and that’s when everyone knew about the story.”
Last month, Ecclestone claimed the tampered race in Singapore should have been voided. He then suggested Massa was “cheated out of the title” and pledged he would have acted differently in a similar incident now.
If the race was cancelled, Massa would be on top after the Brazilian finished outside the points after a pit stop error. The ex-Ferrari stressed he was the one who “lost the most” as he just missed out on what would be his only chance to win the crown.
Piquet addressed Massa’s disappointment, accepting he didn’t mean to affect his title challenge. He added: “Obviously, I wanted it to be different, it is logical that I did not do it to affect one person directly.
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“It was a team order to help someone in our team, it wasn’t to hinder Felipe, it wasn’t like that. We didn’t know what was going to happen and Felipe could very well have won that race if the pitstop didn’t happen.”
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