Nelson Piquet Jr. won the first Formula E championship. Does that exonerate him from the 2008 Singapore GP cheating scandal?
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Nelson Piquet Jr. won the first Formula E championship. Does that exonerate him from the 2008 Singapore GP cheating scandal?
No.
That was Flavio's fault, not his. Nelshino was forced to do that.
I have to give credit where it's due, Nelsinho did well. I don't at all like him as a person
(with the caveat being I 've never met him).
Leaving personality aside (which is a bit hard to rate from the distance), I have to admit I probably have had to re-evaluate him as a driver. I really thought he was utterly rubbish in 2008-2009, possibly the worst driver on the grid in F1 at that time.
However... F1 is littered with drivers about who we can say "didn't fulfill their potential", "were better than what they showed", etc. Lehto and Verstappen seemed utterly incompetent in 1994 alongside Schumacher, but in other seasons looked much better than that.
There are always circumstances to make someone look in a better or worse light. I believe Piquet Jr is fundamentally a fine driver, but circumstances hindered him. Yeah, I don't think he has the talent to be up there with the best F1 drivers. But he can be a competent driver, and not out of his depth on F1 level.
For a long time, I have been thinking that there needs to exist an open-wheel outlet that will accept exceptionally well prepared open-wheel refugee drivers from Formula 1 or from the junior open-wheel series (GP2 and such). That is, people who weren't well enough financially connected to get into F1 or remain in F1, but who were still very good open-wheel drivers. Clearly, IndyCar is not such a series today. But Formula E seems like a series that can absorb the talented open-wheel drivers from Europe (as well as from America) who didn't make it in F1.
So when evaluating Nelson Piquet Jr, I think we have to take into account how high was the amount of talent in Formula E. Sure you can't compare most of them to Hamilton or Vettel or Alonso or others stalwarts of F1, but you should take notice when hearing their names: Alguesuari, Sam Bird, Buemi, Heidfeld, Marco Andretti, Bruno Senna, Nicholas Prost, etc. Lots of Former F1 drivers, many of which were genuinely good open-wheel racers but couldn't hang around long enough because they didn't have enough sponsors.
Regardless of whether you agree with me or not, I do think that Formula E has made agreat achievement by attracting all those drivers and teams in its first season. IndyCar could only dream of such success today.
I think he is ok, 2008, as you said helio, was Flavios fault. also, was leading German gp for a bit, finished 2nd.
In 15-16, team was rubbish. he is better