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  Don't expect to see Piquet in the Grand Prix Masters

The first ever race in the Grand Prix Masters took place last November to much fanfare. It received a lot of positive press and feedback from fans (in terms of message board postings and letters to magazines) was mostly positive. Nelson Piquet didn't take part in that first race in Kyalami which was won by his arch-rival Nigel Mansel. The news over the weekend is: don't expect to see Piquet in GPM any time soon.

Nigel Roebuck in his "ask Nigel" column on Autosport.com has been asked about other drivers and whether they might enter (John Watson and Carlos Reutemann). He assumed they'd been asked, but declined privately for various reasons. Nelson Piquet though has been quite forthcoming about his reasons for not joining the series. He regards his racing days as over (and presumably thinks the same about the other GPM drivers) and thinks the only reason to race in GPM is money. It's pretty harsh stuff although he stopped short of criticising the standard of driving in the first race, which I thought was pretty poor after Nigel and runner-up Emmerson Fittipaldi. In the interview Piquet goes on to brag about how he doesn't need the money on offer because of the success of his satellite tracking company - "Personally, I'm making a lot more than when I used to race in F1. In the next five years, I will gain double what Michael Schumacher has made in his entire career."

I wonder how Emmerson feels about Piquet's comments. Fittipaldi is the team principle of the Brazillian entry in A1GP which is driven by Nelson Piquet Junior all three of them were doing press for the first A1GP round at Brands Hatch last year (which was won by Nelsinho). Maybe the Brasil garage will be a bit frostier this weekend at the Indonesian round.

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