Max Verstappen made waves in the F1 when he took Daniil Kvyat‘s Red Bull seat in 2016, but it was equally high-profile news when he started seeing Kvyat‘s ex-girlfriend, Kelly Piquet.
He started dating Kelly back in January 2021, and two world championships later, the pair have made plenty of waves thanks to her high-profile family name and Verstappen‘s ascension to the peak of F1.
The daughter of three-time F1 world champion Nelson Piquet – a notorious womaniser – Kelly is a model, PR professional and blogger. She’s much more than her surname or her boyfriend.
Who is Kelly Piquet?
Nearly nine years older than Verstappen, Kelly was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1988 to Nelson Piquet and model Sylvia Tamsma.
Though from such a famous Brazilian sporting family, Kelly only moved to Brazil when she was 15 and spent most of her childhood living in France, also living in England for a year.
A true cosmopolitan, she attended Marymount Manhattan College in New York and graduated in International Relations, remaining in NYC after she’d finished.
She worked for Vogue Latinoamerica and Bergdorf Goodman whilst writing columns for Marie Claire and walking the catwalk in fashion shows.
Kelly joined the Formula E social media team in 2015, while she was the covergirl for Vogue NL for January 2023.
What other famous relations does Kelly Piquet have?
The Piquet name is one of the most famous in motorsport, so Kelly‘s relationship with Verstappen is only the latest championship tie to the family.
Nelson Piquet, Kelly‘s father, won three F1 world championships in the 1980s driving for Brabham and Williams. However, he hit the headlines more recently for using a racial slur against Verstappen‘s 2021 title rival Lewis Hamilton. He called Hamilton a ‘neguinho’, a Portuguese term meaning ‘little n****r’.
Kelly didn’t respond publicly to the story but she did like an Instagram post saying Nelson never intended to be racist.
Kelly‘s also the sister of ex-F1 driver and Formula E champion Nelson Piquet Jr. Nelsinho drove for one-and-a-half seasons in F1 for Renault but was replaced at the team by Romain Grosjean, and later blew the whilst on the ‘Crashgate’ saga.
In 2022 he competed in Stock Car Brazil, against opponents including Felipe Massa and Rubens Barrichello.
Kelly‘s also the half-sister of Pedro Piquet. Ten years her junior, Pedro was working his way up the single-seater racing ladder and achieved fifth in F3 in 2019 with Trident. He stepped up to F2 the following season but only lasted a year, he also raced in Stock Car Brazil in 2022.
Who was Kelly Piquet’s first F1 love?
Kelly was first spotted in the F1 paddock by current fans when dating Daniil Kvyat, a relationship which started in January 2017.
The then-Toro Rosso driver had a dismal 2017 season, finishing 19th, and was out of a seat for 2018 as he became a reserve driver for Ferrari.
He returned to Toro Rosso for 2019 and even managed a podium at the 2019 German Grand Prix, but was ditched for good at the end of 2020.
That wasn’t the only relationship to reach the end of the line in 2020 though, as Kelly and Kvyat broke up at the end of the year, with Kelly finding her head turned by another member of the paddock.
Kelly shares a daughter with Kvyat, but Verstappen has also taken a fatherly role with the child.
Kelly isn’t the only thing the Dutchman’s stolen from Kvyat though. His big break came in 2015 when he was promoted to Red Bull, but after a difficult first year with the top team his run came to an end after four races in the 2016 season.
Verstappen stepped into his seat and won at the first time of asking, and he’s never looked back since.
