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Even today, 25 years on, Nelson Piquet walks with a pronounced and pained shuffle, the legacy of the enormous crash that brought his top-level racing career to a definitive halt.
He'd been persuaded to enter the 1992 Indianapolis 500 for a substantial fee; the tragic irony is that he fell in love with the challenge of the Brickyard, felt denied by wrecking his Lola-Buick (and his feet) during practice, and longed to have another crack at winning the race. But there would be no fairytale return for the three-time Formula 1 world champion.
Piquet came to Indy at a different point in his career trajectory than Fernando Alonso has. Over the course of four largely underwhelming seasons with Lotus and then Benetton, Piquet's F1 stock had dropped and the arrival of Michael Schumacher as his team-mate late in 1991 hastened his departure from the scene.
