Piquet decision shows what's wrong with motorsport

The first thing you do when word of a story like Nelson Piquet Jr entering the Pau Grand Prix round of the Formula 3 European Championship reaches the Autosport office is check the date.

It wasn't April 1 at any point this week, so it was real. The reigning Formula E champion, an ex-Formula 1 driver who last raced in F3 in 2004, really was coming back for a one-off this weekend. Then the fun police stepped in.

The wind was taken out of Piquet's sails when the FIA rejected his entry in Carlin's fourth car, a seat that was vacated by Raoul Hyman after the Paul Ricard opener.

What better way to fill that drive for a weekend than with a big name making a shock return? It would have created a bit of buzz around F3, and added another quirky layer to the rich history of the Pau Grand Prix. But no, a driver with a fine CV returning as a potential benchmark for the current crop of wannabe F1 stars in arguably the championship's showpiece event is apparently not good for business.

An e-vote of the FIA's single seater commission decided Piquet's entry would be "against the spirit of the championship". It was left to the commission's president, Stefano Domenicali, to explain that Piquet's appearance in the Pau field would breach new eligibility rules put in place for this season.

One of the primary aims of those eligibility restrictions was to prevent drivers who weren't ready (in terms of age and experience) to take on a championship as prestigious as European F3. It also tackled the problem of drivers spending too long at the same level, with three years set as the maximum. When the rules were drafted, were they really intended to prevent a former grand prix driver from entering a race as well?

When the statement from the governing body explaining its decision includes the phrase "strategic direction" in its reasoning, a piece of motor racing's soul dies. How would the greats of bygone eras - who enhanced their legacies by racing anything they could get behind the wheel of - have felt about "strategic direction" preventing them from showing off their skills and indulging in their passion for wheel-to-wheel combat on a free weekend?

What exactly were the downsides to Piquet racing? If he demolished the field - unlikely given how little time he'd have to get up to speed with a modern F3 car - then it might put a black mark against the championship. But would Piquet dominating show the field wasn't cut out for the big time, or would any success just be chalked up to his experience making him an unusual benchmark?

Beyond that improbable scenario, the only thing at risk was Piquet's ego, and credit to him for being prepared to put that on the line for the weekend. With regular 'work' in Formula E and the World Endurance Championship this isn't a case of an over-the-hill veteran desperately clinging to relevance by taking on some kids. It was an active 30-year-old driver looking to do something cool - a word motorsport could do with being associated with more often in the 21st century.

Unfortunately, the decision to block Piquet's entry for Pau is a sign of what's wrong with motorsport right now: things are over-thought (F1 qualifying, anyone?) and people seem to be afraid of something different to the norm happening. After a while people get bored of the norm, so why not mix it up once in a while?

Yes, Formula 3 does not exist to be a spectacle. Its primary objective is driver development - hence British F3 teams regularly baulked at claims that the series needed BTCC-like attendances, because it's not a category that should be about 'the show'.

But there's nothing wrong with making an exception once in a while. What would the FIA rather have as the most interesting story of its 2016 season so far? A credible driver coming in to generate some interest in its series, and potentially legitimising its regular hotshoes if they can finish ahead of him, or do we only want F3 to make waves when its drivers get involved in fisticuffs in the paddock.

Piquet was going to be a good news story for F3, and for motorsport in general, but it's been swiped away before we even had much of a chance to come to terms with the fact it was going to happen in the first place.

If the FIA is concerned that Piquet could start a trend of senior drivers wanting to dip into F3 whenever they fancy it, that's understandable. But deal with that problem if it happens rather than punishing the one person who had the balls to do it in the first place.

The chances are Piquet would have found the going tough. So anyone watching from afar with similar desires, perhaps those less comfortable in their skin than the Brazilian, would breathe a sigh of relief that they didn't give it a try and rule out doing so in the future.

Piquet made the comparison to NASCAR after the FIA's rejection, citing the fact stars - even champions - from the top-level Cup series can take on the up-and-comers in the second and third tier championships on an almost weekly basis.

"It's like when Kyle Busch races in Truck Series," he said. "If they beat me, they look like heroes. If I beat them, it's all learning."

It's not a flawless system. NASCAR teams (and their sponsors) became so enamoured with putting the top-line drivers in the plum seats, particularly in the second-tier series that sits below Cup, that rules had to be changed regarding points eligibility after a string of Cup drivers won the 'feeder' title. They can still compete today, but they can't steal the championship limelight from the drivers that series is meant to be all about.

F3 would never face the same scale of that problem NASCAR did, and if Piquet's Pau entry did prompt a spate of interest from other drivers following suit, then that would be the time for the FIA to act - and rightly so. F3 is a proper championship, one of the most important on the road to F1, and its true purpose on the single-seater ladder cannot become a sideshow to a bunch of veterans reliving their younger years for a bit of fun on the side.

But team boss Trevor Carlin, of all people, knows that. As diverse as his team's output has become over the years, its heart will always be in F3, and Carlin would never do anything to harm it. Most with a soft-spot for F3 seemed to think this idea was in fact a very good one.

F3 doesn't share the bill with F1 and GP2 on a weekly basis, with drivers having the opportunity to jump between machinery at will as they often do in NASCAR's top three classes. Even if it did, it's less practical to do that in single-seaters than it is in NASCAR. So that problem would never materialise.

Think how rarely we see drivers prepared to jump into another category, particularly one lower down the ladder - like Piquet wanted to this weekend. Even more rare is for a team to be able to facilitate that desire as Carlin tried to. So the FIA would have had nothing to worry about long-term.

Instead, all it has done is suck some of the excitement out of one of F3's best weekends of the year - not because Pau isn't great as it is, but because it should have been even better this year.

Piquet - bizarrely still maligned by many for his role in the 2008 Singapore GP Renault crash scandal (it was hardly his idea) - has drummed up a lot of support and goodwill (plus an offer to race in Australian F3!) through attempting to race at Pau this weekend. The FIA has achieved the opposite.

Perhaps all is not lost, though, for the Formula Ford Walter Hayes Trophy could benefit from this sorry outcome. Race organiser James Beckett has already suggested Piquet should enter that showpiece event instead, and the response on Twitter from the Brazilian was "send me the details!"

While we're at it, who else fancies a blast at Silverstone in November?