Piquet: Alonso always makes a big mess wherever he is

Piquet, a Formula 1 legend and triple world champion, said of Alonso during an interview with ESPN, "He is a fantastic driver when in the car, but very bad with his politics when it comes to working with teams."

"He could have been maybe three, four, five times champion but he always makes a big mess wherever he is, creating a broader problem and always leaving the teams at the wrong time."

"Sometimes when you move to a team you have to have patience, work with the team, make development and afterwards you win."

"If all the time, all the time you want to go to the best team it is no good. You change here, you change there, but you have to be patient work with the team to improve. That's it."

Many rate Alonso as one of the best drivers of the current generation, if not the best, but Piquet does not agree, "I don't think he is better than [Lewis Hamilton] I think they are on the same level - him, Vettel and Hamilton - maybe one has a better year than the other, but they are on the same level."

Asked about Alonso's high-profile Indianapolis 500 foray, Piquet said, "Well, he was not competitive here [in F1] so he wanted to try something different. He loves to be in the media so that was that."

Piquet and Alonso have history through the fact that Nelson Piquet Junior drove for Renault in 2008 and most of 2009 alongside the Spaniard in the team run by Flavio Briatore.

Young Piquet crashed his Renault during the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, at the time claiming he had made a mistake during the race.

But a year later he reported to the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) that it was, in fact, a deliberate action, that he had been ordered by Renault team principal Flavio Briatore and engineer Pat Symonds to stage the crash.

In return for his evidence, Piquet was granted blanket immunity by the FIA while Alonso, who won the race thanks to the incident, claims he was not aware of the conspiracy within the team.