Catchfence

An emotional Nelson Piquet Jr was celebrating last night after finished second at the NASCAR Truck Series race at Nashville, his first podium in the American category. Piquet finished second behind Kyle Busch who normally races in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

Nelson’s result at Nashville in the Kevin Harvick Inc #8 truck at the fifth race of the 2011 season of the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series marks the best result in history for a Brazilian driver in one of the top three NASCAR categories. It came on his first trip to Nashville after he started the race from fourth position – his third top-ten qualifying result in a row.

Nelson said: “I’m so happy! We had a very complicated start to the year, but I knew the results would come. In reality, the season has just started for me. I hope to keep racing better and better for the rest of the year. Even more than scoring the second place result, this race was so worthwhile for learning. It is very important to keep learning different skills here because it is a very different kind of racing to open wheel and to show maturity. The team has to be able to know I can do it and be confident in me.”

The next race in the NASCAR Truck Series will take place at Dover, Delaware on 13 May. It’s back-to-back for the series after that with the next race taking place at Charlotte, North Carolina on 20 May, the race that Formula 1 World Champion Kimi Raikkonen is slated to make his debut with the Kyle Busch team.

For more information on Nelson Piquet Jr visit www.npiquet.com

- Captivate Communications Press Release