Nelson Piquet Jr. found himself in hot water this week when he was reported as being critical of the driving talents of one of the great sporting heroes of Brazil, former F1 world champion Aryton Senna.
Earlier this week, Brazilian media sources quoted Piquet Jr. as saying that: "Someone like Senna would not have won anything in F1 today," apparently implying that Senna was not up to the standard of modern day F1 drivers because he lacked all-round in-depth skills and knowledge. "He was very fast but he had no talent in terms of the technical and mechanical," Piquet was reported as adding.
Piquet had previously caused a stir with his
comments about the current Lotus line-up of
Romain Grosjean and Kimi Raikkonen, saying Grosjean had been "lucky because he came [back into F1] at a time when he had a slightly weaker teammate and a very good car."
Piquet drove for the team in 2008/9 when they competed under the
Renault marque, but he fell out with team principal Flavio Briatore and was caught up in the "crashgate" row when he alleged that Briatore had ordered him to crash and bring out a safety car during the 2008 Singapore GP in order to help
Fernando Alonso win the race.
While he has not retracted his remarks about the current drivers at Lotus, Piquet has moved quickly to refute the reported criticism of one of Brazil's greatest sporting icons of all time.
"I said that if Ayrton had raced ten years earlier he would not have had the success that my father had," explained Piquet in a regular column he provides to Brazil's Yahoo Esportes website. "They were different times and realities. At the turn of the 70s to the 80s, reliability was much lower and drivers had to have much more of a mechanical side.
"Senna came a little later, when it was possible to drive almost all of the time at 100 per cent performance without needing to be a development driver as before," he continued. "Like me, Ayrton arrived in Europe concerned only about driving. He was a super fast driver and the best one in terms of pure speed.
"But he didn't have the same repertoire for the mechanical side as did the previous generation," added Piquet. "Each had its own reflection as the product of his time. Each did what was needed to dominate his era, and each time required different things."
Piquet said that his original comments had been intentionally misconstrued by journalists in order to drum up some much-needed headlines during F1's quiet summer break. "It's as simple as that. And not controversial," he added.