Just to prove there's nothing new under the sun

[kevin ritson]

From an excellent article in this week's Autosport by Mark Hughes, on Nelson Piquet (snr) - here he is describing Nelson's first year at Williams (1986):

"What's more, the team showed absolutely no interest in reeling Mansell in and giving Piquet his promised team leadership. So Piquet began the double and triple-bluff (tricking Mansell on set-up, diff choices etc), and the mind games (publicly calling Mansell thick, verbally abusing Nigel's wife etc). This stuff rather hurt his image. He was no quicker than Mansell and, as they battled each other, so Prost sneaked through and won the title."

Sounds familiar? Elsewhere in the magazine Piquet Jnr, as a driver, is said to have little in common with his father. However, I think it will be interesting to see how this year's Renault pairing get on.

[MrKipling43]

Not really, since (publicly at least) McLaren always said that Hamilton and Alonso would be free to race one and other - it's just that we all though that the two-times world champion would wipe the floor with the n00b. We were wrong. I assume that's what you were referring to.

Also, Piquet Jr 'as a driver' may well be nothing like his father, but the apple never falls very far from the tree - as a man what's he like?

Edited by MrKipling43 on Friday 29th February 16:34

[kevin ritson]

I found it quite interesting that Piquet's image was hit by his tactics in the way that Alonso's was but we now look back at Nelson in a better light. If his son is a chip off the old block we could have two very similar drivers head to head and that would be fascinating.

[MrKipling43]

kevin ritson said:

If his son is a chip off the old block we could have two very similar drivers head to head and that would be fascinating.

Ah, I see what you're getting at. Yeah, it might be pretty spectacular. Mind you, I think Alonso has proved that he doesn't cope well with mind games, deliberate or otherwise. I still think he just royally psyched himself out last season - let things that didn't even exist start to get to him.

[anonymous-user]

MrKipling43 said:

Not really, since (publicly at least) McLaren always said that Hamilton and Alonso would be free to race one and other - it's just that we all though that the two-times world champion would wipe the floor with the n00b. We were wrong. I assume that's what you were referring to.

Is that the Royal We? Plenty of us didnt think anything of the sort.

Edited by johnfelstead on Friday 29th February 21:03

[MrKipling43]

johnfelstead said:

Is that the Royal We? Plenty of us didnt think anything of the sort.

The dreaded sweeping generalisation. Not intentional.