The Rehabilitation of Nelson Piquet Jr.

It's less than a decade since Nelson Piquet Jr. appeared to have the motor racing world at his feet. It's not quite six years since his career seemed damaged beyond all repair. And it's just four days until he can complete a hard-earned rehabilitation by winning the inaugural Formula E championship.

And the Brazilian has managed all of this before his 30th birthday.

Anyone with a passing interest in motorsport will know the Piquet name. Nelson Sr. was a three-time Formula 1 champion, one of very few drivers to rival the dominant Senna-Prost partnership, and the sworn enemy of Nigel Mansell (in an interview with Playboy, Nelson Sr. famously called Mansell 'stupid' and the Englishman's wife 'ugly').

Nelson Jr. — also known as Nelsinho — was born in July 1985, the second of the elder Piquet's seven children to four women. He was almost immediately racing karts, graduated to Formula 3 at just 16, and won both the South American and British championships before he was 20.

He moved to Formula 1's feeder series GP2 in 2005, scored one win during his debut season, and entered 2006 among the title favourites.

Piquet's great misfortune that year was to come up a young British rookie named Lewis Hamilton. Were it not for the future world champion, driving for a more established team, Nelson would have strolled to the title; instead the pair fought over the championship all year long, with Lewis taking five wins to Piquet's four. Hamilton eventually won it in the very last race of the season.

In some ways this was Piquet's career high-point. Even winning the Formula E title would only be on a par with fighting so hard with Hamilton, who has gone on to establish himself as one of the top F1 drivers of the past 20 years.

But while Lewis' next move set him on the road to stardom, Piquet's began a mighty fall.

Nelson became reserve driver at F1 squad Renault in 2007, and after a year on the sidelines he was promoted to a full race seat in 2008, alongside two-time world champion Fernando Alonso. The team was on the decline and their car was not competitive, but it was Piquet, not Alonso, who picked up Renault's first podium of the year with a second-place in Germany.

But behind the scenes his relationship with team boss Flavio Briatore was difficult. The Italian also acted as manager to both Piquet and Alonso — a supreme conflict of interests and an unbelievable concentration of power. Piquet later accused Briatore of using this to threaten him.

"I was relegated [to] 'someone who drives the other car' with no attention at all," he said after leaving the team in 2009. "On numerous occasions, 15 minutes before qualifying and races, my manager and team boss (Briatore) would threaten me, telling me if I didn't get a good result, he had another driver ready to put in my place."

The team's fortunes changed at round 15 in Singapore — as did the trajectory of Piquet's career. The Brazilian crashed out on lap 14 of the race. It was a silly looking accident that played into the perception of Piquet as being out of his depth in F1.

But it also brought out the safety car, which allowed Alonso to make an extremely unlikely tyre strategy work. Fernando went on to win the race; some wondered if the whole thing had really been a coincidence.

Piquet scored a strong result with fourth at the next race in Japan — where Alonso won by entirely fair means — and retained his drive for 2008.

But while 2008's car had been average, the 2009 machine was what might kindly be termed a shitbox. Alonso — famous for his ability to drag every ounce of performance from a crap car — regularly scored minor points. But Piquet was nowhere and, with his relationship with the famously difficult Briatore rapidly deteriorating, he was eventually fired by the team ahead of F1's summer break.

It was at this point that things turned ugly. A few weeks after he was dropped, reports emerged that Piquet had indeed thrown his car into a wall on purpose to bring out a safety car and help his team-mate's strategy work. In September, Piquet made statements to F1's governing body, the FIA, alleging that he was asked by Briatore and fellow team boss Pat Symmonds to crash.

Piquet said that he agreed to the plan due to a "very fragile and emotional state of mind. This state of mind was brought about by intense stress due to the fact that Mr Briatore had refused to inform me of whether or not my contract would be renewed."

Renault launched criminal proceedings in retaliation, alleging that the Piquets were attempting to blackmail the team.

But the claims were true. Later that month, Briatore was handed an indefinite ban from all FIA-sanctioned events — effectively removing him from motorsport altogether — while Symmonds received a five-year ban; Alonso denied all knowledge of the plot and did not face punishment.

The following year, the Piquets won a libel case against Renault, who were forced to pay substantial damages. In a statement released afterwards, the Piquets' lawyer said: "F1 has been deprived of the best of Nelsinho and it is to its detriment that his talent is now being demonstrated elsewhere."

Piquet's F1 career was over at 24. Some wondered whether he'd be able to return to racing at all. But Piquet has fought his way back to the higher — if not highest — echelons of the sport, and shown impressive diversity along the way.

His attempts at reinvention began in the antithesis of F1: America's NASCAR series, a stock-car championship that races almost exclusively on ovals. Starting out in the third-tier Truck Series, Piquet's fall from the pinnacle of world motorsport could not have been more stark. He debuted in 2010 and won his first oval race in 2012. For 2013 he graduated to the second-tier Nationwide Series, but that was as far as his NASCAR journey went. He made one appearance in the premier Sprint Cup series, but has called time on NASCAR for now.

In 2014 Piquet raced full-time in the Global RallyCross championship, even suggesting that this was his new career path. But when the opportunity to race in Formula E arose, Piquet shifted his focus again. For the electric category's inaugural season, he made his single-seater return with China Racing. He is now arguably the most diverse driver of his age group in world motorsport.

"People have this stupid mentality that because you are in Formula 1, you're the best driver. That doesn't mean anything" Piquet told Motorsport.com last year. "A driver always learns more and more. Today I'm learning, tomorrow I'll be learning. I'm better than I was two weeks ago, I'm better than I was last year and I'm gonna be better every time I jump in a car."

And yet, when he signed up for Formula E, some dismissed the Brazilian as another washed up F1 driver trying one last roll of the dice. The world had forgotten the promise Piquet Jr. once showed; it had forgotten that this was a man who pushed Lewis Hamilton to the 21st and final race for the GP2 title.

After a low-key start, Piquet began to build title momentum with second place at round three in Uruguay. He has been consistent, scoring points in every race since, he manages his power well (this is crucial in Formula E) and he still knows how to battle wheel to wheel. He won for the first time at Long Beach — the same track his dad scored his first F1 win — and did so again in Moscow. Heading into the finale, his lead over countryman Lucas di Grassi is 17 points.

Out of the car he can seem a little tetchy and says what's on his mind. In this respect Formula 1 really did lose out: the sport is often criticised for being full of corporate drones who never speak honestly, which Piquet — like his father — invariably does. He is happy to criticise and calls a spade a spade. Not everyone likes it, though he is one of the most popular Formula E drivers among fans.

There will be two races in London this weekend, meaning Piquet still has plenty of work ahead to ensure he seals the Formula E crown. Even if he doesn't, this will nevertheless go down as a season that remind the world Nelson Piquet Jr. can race. But if he does get his hands on the title, Piquet will have proven a lot of people wrong. Still a month shy of 30, there is plenty more he can achieve behind the wheel. There was a time when simply returning to the sport seemed unlikely.