sport news JONATHAN MCEVOY: Sneering Nelson Piquet will think his racist slur towards ... trends now
A smart remark and a cackle. That was Nelson Piquet's way from the start. The cleverest man in the room and the most cutting and pleased to be so.
On Tuesday that characteristic caught up with Brazil's triple world champion after an interview discussing Lewis Hamilton's crash at Silverstone last year with Max Verstappen, recorded in November in Portuguese, got a wider audience.
In it, he referred to the Briton as a 'Neguinho', which translates as 'little n*****'.
The Formula One community was appalled. And if there is any consolation for Hamilton as he feels gratuitously abused, it is that there was not a word of support for Piquet from the motor racing world, just condemnation.
Nor was there surprise at this representative of a Piquet trait, his naughty boy 'quips' having long descended into something far more unpleasant.
John Watson, who briefly drove alongside the 69-year-old son of a Rio doctor and politician at the Brabham team in the early 1980s, told Sportsmail: 'Why would I be surprised by what that a***hole says?'
Nelson Piquet has been blasted by Formula One bosses after his comments on a Brazilian podcast (pictured)
Piquet (right) used a racist slur to describe Hamilton (left) in an interview, sparking outrage
Piquet's form on the personal insult is well-developed. He sneered at Ayrton Senna, calling him 'the Sao Paulo taxi driver'. If it had stopped there, we might conceivably have forced a guilty laugh, but even then only just.
He went further, of course, making widely contradicted insinuations about Senna's sexuality, saying his (Piquet's) then girlfriend, one of his many, would vouch for his verdict that Senna was not into women.
Piquet did not stop there. In an interview with the Brazilian edition of Playboy, he dismissed Nigel Mansell as 'an uneducated fool with a stupid and ugly wife'.
The seven-time world champion has hit back at Piquet's racist comments, calling for 'action' against the 'archaic mindsets'
'Why Nigel didn't punch his lights out when he said what he did about Roseanne I don't know,' said Watson. The Mansells have been happily married for 47 years.
'It was typical Piquet,' Watson continued. 'Some people around him thought he was very funny. Niki Lauda was one of his great pals but I never understood what Niki saw in him other than
