Judge overturns Piquet's conviction for comments about Hamilton

A big riot last year in Formula 1 land. In a podcast, Lewis Hamilton had been called a 'neguinho' by Nelson Piquet, and this came in for a lot of criticism from Max Verstappen 's father-in-law. The court ruled that Piquet had to pay just under a million euros in damages, but the verdict was nevertheless overturned on appeal.

Piquet - himself a three-time world champion in the king class of motorsport - is in disrepute after, in an analysis of the Silverstone crash between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton, he called the latter a 'neguinho', freely translated little nigger.

Piquet himself stated in a reaction that it had never been his intention to insult Hamilton. "What I said was thoughtless and I am not defending it, but I will clarify that the term used is one that is widely and historically used in Brazilian-Portuguese as a synonym for 'type' or 'person', and it was never my intention to offend. I would never use the word I have been accused of using in some (English) translations. I strongly condemn any suggestion that the word was used by me with the aim of belittling a rider because of his skin colour."

Verdict overturned declared null and void

Nevertheless, the court in Brazil sentenced him to pay almost a million euros on grounds of "inadmissible insults". However, Piquet and his lawyers did not agree and filed an appeal. And successfully, according to a new court ruling.

In the appeal, a newly appointed judge found that Piquet's (awkward) statement neither incited hatred nor constituted 'collective harm'. Judge Aiston Henrique de Sous Sousa also did not go along with the theory that Piquet was guilty of homophobia.

New assessment imminent

Yet the case is not quite over, as the Brazilian Prosecutor's Office is appealing to the Supreme Court, as are the plaintiffs in the public civil proceedings: Educafro Brasil, the Santo Dias Centre for Human Rights and the National LGBT Alliance.