Masters Degree: Eliseo Salazar

They say that you should never meet your heroes. So it probably goes without saying you shouldn't be punched by them on live television either.

But that is exactly what happened to Eliseo Salazar.

You may have seen it live; you may have seen it on countless clips shows on TV; you may have even seen it on the internet. But no doubt you will have seen it.

On the 19th lap of the 1982 German Grand Prix, reigning Formula One World Champion Nelson Piquet came up to lap relative newcomer Salazar.

Piquet darted round the outside of Salazar as they entered Hockenheim's Ostkurve, but the pair collided and both careered into the tyre barriers. But that is not the most interesting part of the clip.

Because, seemingly without even trying to get his car going again, Piquet charged from his car to confront Salazar, who was walking towards comparative safety behind the circuit fence. Piquet beckoned him back.

After briefly shouting at him, the Brazilian physically assaulted Salazar in front of the cameras. The punches hardly connected, and it was more comical than sinister, but it was visually striking.

"The story is a lot longer than that," Salazar insists, 24 years on. "You can't make it up. I tell this to very few people because it sounds so unbelievable."

So, listen up. Salazar is about to tell the tale of that fight.

Formula One's most famous televised punch-up actually started four years earlier. Salazar had dominated the Argentinean Formula Ford season in 1978, marking him out early in his career as Chile's best hope of having an F1 driver.

"That is what started my career," Salazar begins. "Argentina and Chile have a big rivalry, particularly in sports - in soccer, boxing and other things. Chile had never been great in motor sport and Fangio had won the world title five times. I was a kid and I went to Argentina and became a champion of motor racing. It was big."

At the same time, Salazar was following the career of another young South American - Nelson Piquet - who was making big waves in British F3.

"I had a Chilean magazine and it had Piquet on the front cover. Nelson had won British F3 in 1978 and had gone straight to Formula One. All the good guys were doing British F3, and I wanted to do the same.

"So I went to England and to Thruxton of all places. I had never been in Europe before and I didn't know where I was going. I landed in Gatwick and I got a train to Victoria station and then I asked how to get to Thruxton. How do I get to Andover?

"Someone told me the way, and I got on a train. I got there with a little bag and not much else."

Already early in the 1979 season, Salazar would have his work cut out to secure a drive, but he continued to wander the paddock to try and meet prospective team bosses.

Alfa Romeo Formula One driver Nelson Piquet © LAT

"I tried to speak English, but I only knew a little. So I got in the paddock where Andrea De Cesaris and Nigel Mansell were based. I talked to a couple of people, but it wasn't really happening.

"I'm thinking I'm going to have to go back to Chile. I didn't meet anybody and it started to rain, so after a while I gave up. I started to walk and get out of the track.

"It is heavily raining, I think it was March. I don't have a rental car or anything, and I am just hitch-hiking back."

But then, one of those one-in-a-million moments actually occurred. One decision started a chain reaction of events that ultimately led to Salazar being present in that figurative boxing ring at Hockenheim four years later.

"Hundreds of cars went by me in the pouring rain and nobody stopped," Salazar recalls. "But then a red Alfa Romeo stopped. It was Nelson.

"For me, it was like seeing God. And he says get in, get in - it's raining, you know? He knew nothing about me. He didn't know I was a racing driver, nothing!"

Don't forget at this point, Piquet was a fully-fledged Formula One driver with Brabham and wasn't exactly expected to be found back in the British Formula Three paddock. So for him to pull up and offer a guy he has never met a lift was quite extraordinary.

"He stopped because maybe he saw a South American lad and he said 'poor guy'," Salazar continues. "But it is one of the most amazing things ever.

"So he said to jump in the back, and he asked me where I was going. I'm speechless. I say to him that I knew who he was so I started talking to him and I said I don't know anyone here. I showed him the magazine from my bag and I said I want to be like you. You can check this with him if you don't believe me."

Piquet then took Salazar under his wing for the next few days. They went to West London, and Piquet showed Salazar the place he used to stay in before he became an F1 driver.

"The first McDonalds I ate in my life was with Nelson in Earl's Court. It was seven pounds a night in this hotel, which was a lot back then. Then Nelson picked me up the next day and introduced me to British F3 people. I had sponsorship, and I started racing for Ralt."

Salazar describes this major step in his career as simple as that. Without Piquet he wouldn't have made it to British F3. He wouldn't have impressed in the category before moving to the Aurora British F1 series in 1980, where he won three races and finished second in the championship. Maybe he wouldn't have then progressed to March's F1 team.

"Now I was in proper Formula One, which was the same year that Nelson, the guy who had helped me get there, became world champion."

Salazar scored a point in his first year at the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, having switched to Ensign mid-season before he moved to ATS in 1982. Piquet and Salazar had stayed in touch as much as any friendly Formula One rivals did back then, but what happened in Germany that year was to understandably stretch that relationship.

He sets the scene: "In Hockenheim, it was the first time Brabham are going to refuel. So Piquet is going crazy quicker than anybody else.

"I qualified 21st and I'm running eighth in the race and I see Nelson in my mirrors in that straight, maybe 100 yards behind me. For a while I was thinking that he would take half a lap to catch me, but he was running on no fuel and he was ready to refuel on the next lap.

Eliseo Salazar (ATS Ford) © LAT

"The next time I see him, he is more or less on the outside of the corner coming into the first gear chicane. The next time I see him he is here and I think shit! He has gone on the outside. He is leading the race and he is the world champion so I stay on the inside.

"He tried to pass me on the outside a bit late and I braked a bit late on the marbles and I slid, and then it happened.

"And he's furious. I think he shouldn't have passed me on the outside. But at the time he was so concerned about having to make the time up, because he was the only car refuelling in the field. He tried an optimistic move and he had all the time in the world to do this action.

"When we hit I said 'shit'. It was Nelson. I was thinking about everything he had done for me in the past.

"But then he comes over to me and starts hitting me on the helmet. But it doesn't hurt me, you know, because of my helmet, and he's hurting himself more than me. And he's not really hitting - his hands maybe are hitting my front but he's not hitting. I didn't fight back."

In the aftermath the pair didn't speak. As can so often happen in motorsport, it takes one collision to jeopardise a previously unflappable relationship.

"I still think he was a big part of my career. At the time I felt really bad.

"It would be very hard to tell how long it was before we spoke again. It was more than two weeks and so then I was thinking of it through so many times. It was a bad situation, you know? Obviously he was the last person I wanted to get in an incident with."

Salazar's F1 career faded a year later when he left RAM, and he forged a second career in IndyCars in the 90s, winning at Las Vegas in the early days of the IRL. In F1, Piquet won the world championship twice more.

Time did heal for the pair following the incident, and they did start speaking again. They even posed for photos and shook hands when both were back in the Formula One paddock a few years ago.

"In F1, he was always OK with me, but obviously that was when he was big in F1," Salazar concludes. "He was a special kind of person, you know. You don't have to say he was a special kind of friend, but if you needed him he was there. When I met him, it was the right time.

"But he knew it was me he was fighting with. He looked at me and it felt like he had made this guy and look at what he had just done to me. But for me, it was really special that it was Nelson."