Piquet to compete in Massa’s International Challenge of the Stars

Hot on the heels of Sunday’s SKUSA SuperNats kart event in Las Vegas, Nelson Piquet will be racing again this weekend (28-29 November). Felipe Massa has invited him to compete in his International Challenge of the Stars charity kart race, which will be held at a brand new circuit in Florianopolis in Brazil.

In Las Vegas, Piquet finished eighth overall from 43 entrants in the SuperPro category, one position behind Michael Schumacher, and is now gearing up for another action-packed weekend of competitive karting.

This year marks the fifth International Challenge of the Stars, the event having been launched in 2005 by Felipe Massa, who won the event himself in 2006, with Piquet finishing in the runner-up spot. Michael Schumacher won in 2007, with Piquet retiring from mechanical problems after starting on pole. Rubens Barrichello won in 2008.

The race will see Felipe Massa returning to competitive action for the first time since his accident in July in qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix. Other drivers confirmed for the event include Michael Schumacher, Rubens Barrichello, Vitantonio Liuzzi, Antonio Pizzonia, Tony Kanaan and Christian Fittipaldi.

The race will be broadcast on Globo TV in Brazil, and viewers of Eurosport will also be able to watch. British Eurosport 2 will be showing the event live at 1800hrs on Saturday 28 November and 1300hrs on Sunday 29 November.

Nelson Piquet: “I have never had so much fun as racing in Las Vegas and I was really pleased finishing eighth against the best karters in the world. Now I’m happy that I can be back in Brazil to do Felipe’s race this weekend. It’s going to be very competitive as usual, there are some great drivers confirmed and I want to try to win it this year!"