Confetti cause of defeat—Piquet

Press, 15 April 1987, Page 76

Confetti cause of defeat —Piquet

NZPA-AP Rio de Janeiro The Brazilian racing driver, Nelson Piquet, says paper confetti tossed by fans at his Williams-Honda as he sped around the Rio circuit cost him a first place in the Brazilian Grand Prix on Monday. Piquet finished second in the race, coming in 45 seconds behind the world champion, France’s Alain Prost. McLaren’s Stefan Johansson was third. “The fans kept me from a victory with all the confetti they threw on to the track in my first lap,” Piquet told the “Jomal Do Brasil” newspaper. “I was leading the race and collected the bits of paper in my radiator? That brought up the motor temperature dramatically.’’ On the seventh lap Piquet was forced

to stop in the box as temperatures in his car soared to as high as 120 degrees. Normal motor temperatures should not exceed 100 degrees, Piquet told the newspaper. Though his radiator was cleaned at that time, Piquet fought an overheated motor throughout the race and had to drop the turbo pressure from 3.8 to 3.2, making it difficult to pass the faster cars. “After the car heats up it’s difficult to drop the temperature,” Piquet said. “Prost was lucky, I had never started so well and I felt in complete control of the race,” Piquet said. “If it weren’t for the radiator problem I would have disappeared into the distance and Prost would only have seen me through binoculars.”