Hamilton hails 'amazing' Brazil for Piquet punishment
The 70-year-old three-time F1 world champion has been ordered to pay five million Brazilian Reals (£780,000) in moral damages for using a racial slur in reference to Hamilton when commenting about his British Grand Prix crash with Max Verstappen, who is the partner of Piquet’s daughter Kelly.
Hamilton called for “archaic mindsets” to change after the footage from the 2021 interview surfaced last June. Piquet later apologised for his “ill-thought-out” remark about the seven-time world champion.
In a separate clip, which emerged later, Piquet used racist and homophobic language when describing how Hamilton narrowly missed out on the 2016 championship to Nico Rosberg.
"Back when it happened I made comments on it - I still believe that we generally shouldn't be giving people that are just full of hate a platform,” Hamilton said ahead of the Australian Grand Prix.
"I'd like to acknowledge the Brazil government. I think it's pretty amazing what they have done in holding someone accountable, showing people that it's not tolerated.”
Hamilton, who was declared an honorary citizen of Brazil last year, added: "Racism and homophobia is not acceptable and there is no place for it within our society,”
"I love that they [the Brazilian government] have shown that they stand for something.
"I wish that more governments out there would do that, such as you've just seen in Uganda, and there are other countries in Africa and the Middle East - there's a lot of that can be learned from that."
Lewis regularly attends Grands Prix for Crash.net around the world. Often reporting on the action from the ground, Lewis tells the stories of the people who matter in the sport.
