Nelson
Piquet Jr.

Nelson Piquet Jr., known as Nelsinho, was born in Heidelberg in 1985 and is Brazilian. His father, Nelson Piquet, was a three-time Formula 1 world champion. He began karting in Brazil in 1993 and moved up to Formula 3 Sudamericana in 2001, winning its championship in 2002. In 2003 he moved to Britain, finished third in British Formula 3 and took the title in 2004, becoming the youngest champion of that series at 19 years and two months. In 2005 he raced in A1 Grand Prix for Brazil and in GP2, where he took his first win at Spa-Francorchamps. In 2006 he was GP2 runner-up to Lewis Hamilton.

He was Renault's test and reserve driver in 2007 and was promoted to the race team alongside Fernando Alonso for 2008. He scored his first points with seventh place at the French Grand Prix. At the German Grand Prix he finished second behind Hamilton, his only podium in Formula 1. He was fourth in Japan and ended the season twelfth in the championship.

Piquet stayed at Renault for 2009 but was without a point when the team parted with him in early August, and Romain Grosjean replaced him. He made 28 starts in total. After his exit it emerged that, on instruction from team officials, he had crashed deliberately at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, helping Alonso to win. The FIA investigated, and team principal Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds left Renault. Piquet never returned to Formula 1.

From 2010 he raced in NASCAR. In 2012 he won the Nationwide Series race at Road America, the first Brazilian to win a NASCAR national series event, and added two Truck Series victories. In 2014 he finished fourth in the Global RallyCross Championship. In Formula E he won the inaugural 2014-15 championship with China Racing by a single point from Sébastien Buemi, with wins in Long Beach and Moscow. He joined Jaguar in 2017 and left the team after the Sanya ePrix in 2018-19.

Source: Wikipedia, “Nelson Piquet Jr.”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.