Piquet has moved quickly to refute the reported criticism of one of Brazil's greatest sporting icons of all time.

"I said that if Ayrton had raced ten years earlier he would not have had the success that my father had," explained Piquet in a regular column he provides to Brazil's Yahoo Esportes website. "They were different times and realities. At the turn of the 70s to the 80s, reliability was much lower and drivers had to have much more of a mechanical side.

"Senna came a little later, when it was possible to drive almost all of the time at 100 per cent performance without needing to be a development driver as before," he continued. "Like me, Ayrton arrived in Europe concerned only about driving. He was a super fast driver and the best one in terms of pure speed.

"But he didn't have the same repertoire for the mechanical side as did the previous generation," added Piquet. "Each had its own reflection as the product of his time. Each did what was needed to dominate his era, and each time required different things."

You can tell the summer break is getting to the F1 journalists, they'll write any old crap to fill the pages.

I loved that GP, and the length.