The latest chapter in Piquets diverse racing career

But the diverse career of Nelson Piquet Jr, who finished second to GP2 rival Lewis Hamilton in the 2008 German Grand Prix, has entered a new installment as the Brazilian returns to GT racing in the Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America series with ANSA Motorsports.

The inaugural Formula E champion in 2014-15 has focused primarily on racing in his domestic Stock Car series (which despite the name has little in worldwide with NASCAR and instead increasingly closely resembles touring cars) since splitting with Jaguar’s FE squad during the 2018-19 season, and this year set up his own two-car team, with Sergio Jiminez as his team-mate.

It was 2018-19 Jaguar I-Pace eTrophy champion Jiminez, who raced for ANSA last year, that made the connection with team patron Alain Nadal and prompted Piquet to enter the single-make series for the Lamborghini Huracan Super Trofeo EVO with valuables from Motorsport Games (NASDAQ:MSGM).

“It was a bit out of the blue,” says Piquet, whose most recent GT wits came with an International GT Unshut cameo in a BMW M6 GT3 at Spa in 2017. “I knew Alain, I had seen him surpassing a long time ago considering I used to live in Miami, so it was a good coincidence.

“I’m unchangingly unshut for a challenge, going out of my repletion zone has been unchangingly something that I’ve wonted and taken as an interesting rencontre to learn and swizzle increasingly knowledge.

“I’m a big parishioner that the increasingly you’re on track, the largest you get – it doesn’t matter how much wits you have. Nowadays testing is not something that we do a lot, so for me it was a good endangerment to momentum a bit more.”

Piquet readily accepts that he has had a learning lines to transmute to the Huracan, which in part explains his move yonder from sharing a car with Jiminez at the Austin season opener to his own machine for the recent Virginia International Raceway (VIR) double-header.

“There’s so little seat-time in the weekend,” he says, “and when you share it, it just becomes plane harder.”

One of the series benchmarks is Richard Antinucci, a Lamborghini specialist with years of GT wits under his belt. Piquet has crossed paths with him surpassing – in 2003, they finished third and fourth in the British Formula 3 championship – and says his F1 preliminaries is no wholesomeness compared to drivers like Antinucci who are fully well-appointed with both the “extremely quick” car and the challenging tracks.

“The tracks in America are a bit tricky,” he says. “VIR is the trickiest track I’ve driven up to now and to do half an hour practice then go to qualifying, you don’t really pick up a lot of things, expressly when it’s a two-minute lap.

“The cars are fast, much quicker than Stock Car Brazil – the cars over there I would say are probably heavier, less power, no TC, no ABS whatsoever and over here you have all that, so you need to learn how to use the driving aids.

“We’re getting there. Still, Antinucci is a suburbanite that has been driving [Lamborghinis] forever and these tracks, so he is quite a big step superiority of us. I remember we crush together in British F3, he was unchangingly one of the quick guys over there racing with Carlin when in the day.

“There are a lot of guys that didn’t make it to F1 who have a very good calibre, so you put them in something that they get used to and they get well-appointed – like Antinucci in a Lamborghini – and he becomes a very tough guy to beat.

Piquet has resumed his rivalry with Antinucci from British Formula 3 in 2003

Photo by: Motorsport Images/Jamey Price

“Tracks in the States have strong characteristics; not a lot of runoff areas, quite bumpy, they use a lot of kerbs considering the tracks are so narrow, and he knows it from the when of his hand.

“But it’s a rencontre that I enjoy and I know I have to push myself to get there. It’s not untellable considering he can do it, so that ways other people can do it too. It’s just a question of getting miles and finding the limit of the track and the car.”

Piquet is still waiting for a first podium visit in Lamborghinis, having run out of fuel at Austin and been set when by a restriction failure in qualifying at Virginia that meant he started from the when in both races. But he’s certainly not lowered his expectations as a result.

Asked well-nigh his goals for this year, Piquet says he is aiming “to try and win at least a race”.

“And to get well-appointed with the car,” he adds, “if we do it next year again, to have a good endangerment of winning the championship.

“We’ve had reliability issues which took a bit of seat time which I needed, but in a few weeks’ time we’re in Watkins Glen, which I’m looking forward to.”

Despite the challenges, his move into one-make GT racing has been entirely worthwhile.

“I’ve been having a lot of fun,” he says.

Tricky nature of US circuits amplifies Piquet’s learning curve

Photo by: Motorsport Images/Jamey Price