Well, I guess now you
got the feeling of it..
Nelson Piquet - The challenges of a
Formula One champion
I started running karts
when I was over 18.
I bought my kart, financed by Crefisul,
36 installments, you know?
It was a different world. My dad
was against any kind of racing.
I started working at a garage
and he really disapproved it
because I dropped off engineering
after two years in.
I didn't have anyone to tell I
wanted to be a Formula One pilot.
Two things really
contributed to it.
First, Emerson, who paved
to way for all of us.
I think between me, Ayrton and Emerson,
Emerson was the most important one.
Granted, he wasn't
the fastest guy,
but if it weren't for him, no one else would
make 2 thousand Brazilians do the same thing.
He cleared the path for us.
Second, I thought of myself as a
much better mechanic than a pilot.
Everything I did
was better.
I won because my car was better,
I did things in a better way...
I used to pull my race car, that
blue one over there, using a van.
I practically
lived in the van.
And I was
mostly alone.
So between races, sometimes the
van's engine would break,
so I would take the engine out, of the super V
it was the same engine block.
Then I would replace the
cylinder liners.
Then I would travel, switch engines...
I did all this without any...
- No sweat, right?
- Yeah, no sweat.
It has to be done.
It had to be done. I wasn't bad.
It was about survival.
Are there sacrifices in life?
Yes, but in retrospect it wasn't a sacrifice.
Life was like that back then.
It wasn't a sacrifice or a penance, right?
They were the day-to-day challenges.
Yeah, yeah.
I've always been a very simple man, and still
am the most simple person in the world.
For me it's...
OK, I have this and that.
If the day comes when I can't have it anymore,
it won't make much of a difference.
This is my gas station,
which I really love.
I'm always adding
something new to it.
Look at these
bikes right here.
This is a German
1965 Lambretta.
Everything works.
That's how
we roll here.
I love motorcycles.
I get the BMWs...
and add turbo to them. They all have
turbo, intercoolers. 190 HP.
- Do you ride them?
- Sure, I travel with them, everything.
Everything here
is ready to be used.
And these are the ones I used to work with
when I was a motorcycle mechanic.
Except for the Vespa, I used
to work with all of them.
So you have the 6 cilinders, Honda...
This one is nice, KZ 900.
When I was a mechanic, there was only
one of them here in Brasília.
This is the Black Widow, a lot of people
died riding it, 44 HP, looks like a 50cc.
This one is from 1974. It's from
when I was a mechanic.
Everything here...
I ride them all.
They arrived from Japan disassembled.
I put them together. 
They didn't come with wheels.
So I assembled everything, wires and all,
it was kind of a CKD so
the price would be lower.
I assembled them and
the store sold them.
I was just
the mechanic.
This one here...
This was the
famous 1050.
Come close,
you won't believe it.
All carbon fiber.
The body is...
The whole body
is carbon fiber.
All of it, without the metal parts,
weighs 54 kg. Grab this door here.
- Wow!
- Feels like a piece of paper.
- Really light.
- Yeah.
The whole body is just 54 kg
without the metal parts.
It was made here in Brasília, at the Autódromo.
There are some cars here that
I love. This is a 1958 Porsche.
I wanted you to tell us how,
in the history of Formula One,
you are the only pilot ever,
not just from Brazil, but ever
who won 2 out of 3 championships racing a car
that wasn't awarded the best one in the same year.
No other pilot did that.
What do you think it was?
I don't know, man. I always liked to create
things, I always like to work together with...
Back then there was no telemetry.
So not only you were the pilot,
but also the person who told to the car
project guys what we needed to do to improve it.
So when I stopped at the box, I said
"Look, the car is behaving like this and that".
You can split your car into two things:
low and high.
Low is everything concerning mechanics.
High is a bit of mechanics along with aerodynamics.
If you understand that and you
can use that as a feedback...
It's not that he will adjust your car,
because I always did that myself,
but he will work on it to make a better
version next year or six months.
And I always liked to work
with a good car designer
because if we didn't the year's championship, we would win the next year.
- Always working.
- Always.
This was great for me. I loved this
thing between the pilot and the designer.
I wasn't afraid to get my hands on it.
I won with Michelin, Goodyear, BMW, Ford, Honda...
I was world champion with
Ford, BMW and Honda.
And always for the first time. I was the first
Michelin champion, first Honda champion...
And you're the only pilot to be
a BMW champion up to this day.
So I really liked
to develop things.
I remember some
fantastic things. 
Gordon increased the axle of the car.
I drove and thought "This car is perfect!"
He said
"What do you mean, perfect?"
And I said it was perfect.
When you're about to go on a corner,
you don't wait for the tires to get warm.
When the tires are cold
and the car evenly balances everything
on the four wheels, it's perfect.
So I went on club, the Silverstone corner,
pedal to the floor, and we were 0.4 or 0.5 seconds faster
because I didn't have to break.
It was perfect.
Other thing, I remember it vividly,
I was in Monza in 1983 testing things
and Paul Rosche arrived with a turbo
piece wrapped in his handkerchief.
He had just arrived
from the factory.
So they switched the turbines of the car.
I ran one lap and said "the championship is ours"
The car reached 2000 RPM really fast.
So I said "It's over, we won"
- That was in 1983?
- Yes, 1983. And we won that year.
In San Juan you can chill on the grass
around the track and the PA announces
"Formula 3 is about to begin".
It was very cold, it was the end of March.
When the race was about to start,
I think it was the first or second one,
one the of the spark plugs malfunctioned.
I started with it anyway and...
I got back to the box and I wanted to
kill everybody. What could we do?
We were there, we had spent money...
I couldn't believe it!
What are we doing here?
Let's just leave!
Then Pedrão had an idea: we bought
those heaters from England fueled by kerosene,
which really heats up the place, and then
we assembled a sort of stove on top of the car.
We put the heater in the back and
stood in the front, enjoying the warm air.
We left the car there for three hours.
When the PA announced the start,
I would go pedal to the floor.
The car was already 50 degrees Celsius.
I almost got burned
getting in the car.
I would hit the gas pedal... then we got in formation.
The pole position wasn't mine.
I was third or fourth. In the first lap I got a
3 second lead, another 3 in the second, and so on...
When the race finished, Pedrão asked
"What did you do? What happened?"
Pedrão, you won't believe it. Right in the first
corner I got the lead and kept going.
- But why?
- Because the
tires were already warm.
Not just the car, the tires were warmed up.
Instead of 0C, the tires were already 50C.
We immediately created a tire heater
and left in inside the truck.
We would warm the car...
- Inside the truck so no one would see?
- Not only that.
- The tires would reach 100C.
- Right.
- You would warm it up...
- Outside we could only reach 50C.
I won all races.
Obviously we were smarter
than everyone else as well.
But to keep up the appearances,
we had nothing. No truck...
This car is wonderful.
Do you know the story behind it?
(No)
Ford wanted
to buy Ferrari. 
Ferrari didn't want it, then Ford
decided to design a car to run Le Mans.
So they designed this car here. It's called GT-40
because it's 40 inches above the ground.
It's 1 meter. You can see it is the
"shortest" car around here. Just 1 meter.
This car won in 1967, 1968
and 1969 in Le Mans.
In 2005, Ford built the
very same car with a new engine.
So I bought it in 2005.
It's wonderful!
Simply wonderful.
How did your whole experience from
Formula One was useful for you as an entrepreneur?
There is no doubt that the way I was
in the past, of solving my own problems,
without a manager, to make my own contracts...
I didn't even have a lawyer...
All this was very helpful when
I started working for real.
First because
I was fearless.
Second because in Formula One I learned that
the most important thing is to have a team and schedule.
And of course, to work hard. And I was very lucky,
because when I came to Brazil to create Autotrac,
I met a person, who today is
a very dear friend, who said
"Look, the problem with a company is: if you can
sell your product, everything falls into place.
If you don't, you'll have a major problem.
Forget being CEO, go be a salesman."
I tried to take some sales course.
There weren't any in Brazil.
Back then, if you weren't good at anything,
I would be either e policeman or a salesman. 
That's what they used to say.
So I took sales courses, came back here
and I learned how to sell.
That really changed my personality,
because I was really shy,
introvert, barely spoke.
I had to forget racing and
win in the business world.
People were betting in
São Paulo when I would go broke.
- Really?
- Yeah, some businessman waged on it.
And I learned this from racing: team,
perseverance, schedule, hard work...
Obviously I had no idea
about businesses, taxes...
You learned as you went.
I learned it and got
competent people with me.
Today Autotrac has 300 people.
It's a big family.
That's why it worked.
This car here...
This is a...
Well, I guess now you
got the feeling of it..
- How many HP?
- 1000.
(Did you want to scare us?)
Yeah, I did it
on purpose, sorry.
I did it on purpose.
Today, in retrospect,
what would you say...
If you were to translate
today in the form of a few words,
what would you say to a young person who's
in college or just began working,
what would you
say to them?
Be curious and try to learn
something new everyday. Anything.
We are like a sponge, the more
you learn, the more you know things,
more you will likely
use it in your life.
And you must persevere.
You must want to do things.
You have to do it better
than anyone else. You have to be better.
Life is a competition
of everything.
You have to be better
than others. You must.
And obviously, the basics: be honest,
work hard, don't tell lies.
That's it.
I think life is very simple.
Very simple.
I think being successful in Formula One
or anything else, it means nothing.
You have to be happy
with your life.
You must be happy and
do things for yourself.
When people asked me "Who do you
dedicate this race/championship to?"
"No one. I dedicate
it to myself"
You were the one who
got your hands dirty...
"Oh, I'll dedicate it
to my mom and dad..."
I always liked to
speak my mind.
Never to be condescending and
people what to do...
But you did, right? When racing?
Even if you did it for yourself,
it became
larger than you.
That's it, everybody. I hope you
liked this very special video today.
And let it be an inspiration for you,
your decisions, your growth,
and may you reach
your life goals.
Thank you very much,
see you in the next video.
