Nelson Piquet Snr. has been ordered to pay $953,050 (5 million Brazilian Reals) in moral damages for racist and homophobic comments made against Lewis Hamilton. The comments were made in an interview in 2021, when the three-time Brazilian Formula 1 World Champion used a racial slur commenting on Hamilton's British Grand Prix crash with Max Verstappen. Piquet apologised and said they had been mistranslated, issuing a statement last year claiming the words he used were "ill-thought-out." However another clip of him on a podcast emerged where he used homophobic language against Hamilton, when describing how the Briton missed out on the 2016 championship to Nico Rosberg. The compensation was awarded by Judge Pedro Matos de Arrudo after the charges were brought by Brazil's National LGBT+ Alliance along with three other human rights groups, who wanted Piquet to pay 10 million Brazilian Reals in moral damages. In his decision, according to Reuters, the judge said the amount was given: "in the sense that one should not only appreciate the reparative function of civil liability but also (and perhaps mainly) the punitive function so that, as a society, we can someday be free from the pernicious acts that are racism and homophobia." Hamilton was awarded honorary Brazilian citizenship last June.
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