Inside Nelson Piquet’s Furious 1982 Hockenheim Clash with Eliseo Salazar

As driver punch-ups go, few are as notorious as the incident at Hockenheim in 1982, when Nelson Piquet set about Eliseo Salazar.

Piquet’s fury was understandable. Brabham’s development of the turbo BMW engine had been badly delayed and the team needed a good finish at the car company’s home race. With a narrow lead over Tambay’s Ferrari and half the race still to go, Piquet was taken off by Salazar, whose ATS was a lap behind. Once out of his car, Nelson laid into the Chilean with fists and feet, under the gaze of a TV camera (right).

The incident added nothing to the Piquet image. But an interesting justification for the outburst is offered by Gregg Siddle, former F3 team owner and a close friend of Piquet.

“In 1979 Nelson had gone to Thruxton for an F3 race, and as he was driving home he saw a guy walking down the road outside the circuit,” says Siddle. “It was a bleak day, so he picked the guy up. It was Salazar, who’d arrived in England a few days earlier with an ambition to go F3 racing and a briefcase full of money. Nelson asked me to help. Salazar was pleasant, but I’ve never let anyone race one of my cars because of the money he offered, and I didn’t want him on those terms. But I introduced him to someone who would do the job, and he was on his way.

“What infuriated Nelson at Hockenheim was that Salazar was to blame. Nelson said his first reaction had been to head-butt him in the chest. But he realised it might break his ribs. So then he vented his anger in the way the world saw. What the world didn’t see was what happened when a VW Kombi arrived to ferry the two back to the pits. They both climbed aboard, but somewhere along the way Salazar was firmly booted out.”

The most embarrassing consequence of the fight didn’t spring to light until 1993, when Paul Rosche spoke to Piquet at the annual BMW party. “Paul said that when they took the engine back to Munich, they found the skirt on one of the pistons had started to break up,” says Piquet. “If I hadn’t crashed out, the engine would have blown up. Imagine what the press would’ve said about that happening…”