A Brazilian court ruled on Friday that Nelson Piquet, Brazil’s triple Formula One champion, must pay 5 million Brazilian Reals ($953,050) in moral damages for racist and homophobic comments he made about Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton.
When commenting on Hamilton’s British Grand Prix crash with Max Verstappen in an interview in November 2021, Piquet used a racial slur referring to the seven-time world champion.
After a video of the interview surfaced on social media last June, Hamilton called for action to change “archaic mindsets.” Piquet, 70, apologized to the British driver and stated that his remarks had been mistranslated. Verstappen’s partner is Piquet’s daughter Kelly.
In a later video, Piquet used racist and homophobic language against Hamilton in a podcast interview, describing how Hamilton lost the 2016 championship to Nico Rosberg.
Hamilton is the sport’s only black driver, having been granted honorary Brazilian citizenship in June.
Four human rights organizations, including Brazil’s National LGBT+ Alliance, filed the charges, demanding that Piquet pay 10 million Brazilian Reals in alleged moral damages.
Judge Pedro Matos de Arrudo stated in his decision that the amount of compensation was given “in the sense that one should not only appreciate the reparative function of civil liability but also (and perhaps primarily) the punitive function so that, as a society, we can someday be free of the pernicious acts that are racism and homophobia.”
