After having such a “hard time” as team-mate to Michael Schumacher, three-time World Champion Nelson Piquet “lost interest in F1” and walked away.

That is the claim put forward by former F1 racer turned pundit Marc Surer, who offered his take on that short-lived Benetton partnership.

Michael Schumacher experience destroyed Piquet’s ‘interest in F1’

With his three titles already in the bag, Piquet made the move to Benetton for 1990 in the absence of a seat with a top team, this proving to be just a two-year stint and his final in Formula 1, as generations collided in 1991 with Piquet partnering Michael Schumacher, who would go on to become a seven-time World Champion and F1 icon.

Schumacher had turned heads with an impressive debut at Spa that year with Jordan, but was quickly snapped up by Benetton who ousted Roberto Moreno to field the rising German star, with Piquet only once finishing ahead of Schumacher in the five races they contested as team-mates and three that they both finished.

Piquet retired from Formula 1 at the end of that season, and according to Surer, the experience of being Schumacher’s team-mate had driven him to that decision.

“There was Flavio Briatore the manager of Benetton and he had an eye on Schumacher right away,” Surer stated in a Champ1 interview.

“He was up against Nelson Piquet and Piquet threw in the towel at the end of the year because Schumacher had given him such a hard time that he lost interest in F1.

“So you have to say Briatore did the right thing [signing him]. If he had continued with Jordan, I don’t know what would’ve happened.”

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Schumacher went on to win his first two World Championships with Benetton in 1994 and 1995, but from there, embarked on a new career chapter with Ferrari which would see him become a legend of the famed Italian squad and Formula 1 in general.

Schumacher convinced Benetton designer Rory Byrne and technical director Ross Brown to join him at Ferrari from the following year, with the team going on to win six straight Constructors’ titles between 1999-2004, with Schumacher winning five Drivers’ Championships in a row as part of that run of dominance.

Having retired from Formula 1 after the 2006 campaign, Schumacher made a three-season return to the sport with Mercedes from 2010-12, before his second and final retirement.

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