Relations between Nelson Piquet Jr and his Renault team boss Flavio Briatore seem to have all-but disintegrated, with both men reacting angrily as the Brazilian fights for his F1 future following another disappointing race weekend.
In separate interviews, the two have been quoted as throwing bitter and comical insults between each other, as Piquet Jr's final hopes of seeing out 2009 with Renault dwindle ahead of the European GP at Valencia. He was widely tipped to be replaced by GP2 driver Romain Grosjean for the Hungarian GP, after failing to fulfill performance obligations in his contract, but he was kept on for the trip to Budapest.
However, the Renault team boss Flavio Briatore was highly critical of the Brazilian in an interview with Autosprint magazine.
"I've always been fair with my drivers," Briatore exaggerated to the magazine, "I expected more from Piquet because this is his second year with a full-time drive. He's done less testing compared to Alonso, but Webber as well tested less than Vettel because of his broken leg, but look where he is now.
"When a driver lacks results, he opens the book of excuses and begins: the fault is the weather's, a spectator's sunglasses, a spin on the straight, this and that..."
He concluded the savage attack by refuting that the team favours Alonso, ranting that: "It's not true that there's a technical difference of seven tenths between Alonso's and Piquet's car. If that was true, we'd have a car capable of winning the title, and that unfortunately isn't the case. The technical difference has always been minimal and never longer than one race."
In return, Piquet Jr voiced his own amusing criticisms of his boss, who was filmed leaving the Hungarian track at the weekend after Alonso retired, even though Piquet was still in the race.
The Brazilian driver claimed that Crazy Flav has no respect for him. Which isn't entirely unbelievable.
"Flavio is a business man, but he doesn't understand s**t about F1," Piquet was quoted as swearing to reporters, "He's my manager, but in his role of team boss he doesn't respect me.
"He only thinks about money, at how much money he can pocket in everything he's involved, he's a man with no friends. Every day everyone asks me what's going on, so why should I always keep quiet?"
In retaliation to Briatore's comparison of Piquet to Webber when it came to a lack of testing, Piquet moaned that: "Webber has been in F1 since 2001, he started in a different era, when testing wasn't limited. He's probably done more than 20,000 kms in testing, so it's not a fair comparison. Now the situation is more difficult for a driver with little experience.
"And besides that, I have to fight against Briatore and Alonso himself, who is a fantastic driver. When I wasn't competitive in qualifying, I was the first owing up to it. But if Briatore doesn't understand that, what can I do?"
Piquet's desperate situation is likely to be resolved in the four week break, though after this latest catfight, the mechanics are probably already preparing the "Grosjean" stickers to paste onto the side of the cockpit of the #8 car in Valencia. Assuming that Renault are there, of course, with a race ban still hanging over them following their tyre-cock in Hungary.
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