I don't know enough about the specifics of Brazilian Portuguese to judge what was actually said or the meanings behind it, be they intentional or not. And I do think that is dodgy to try and moralise about one language in another.
Having said that, piquet has form for being an arsehole and it's been good to see quite a few making clear their objections in general to racism.
The biggest takeaway is that regardless of what that word means, just calling someone 'the little black one' is not very pleasant either way. That kind of language is what we must get rid of. It's all depending on context. If a white person says the n-word ending with an a as a mistaken compliment or in a rap lyric it's a completely different thing to racially abusing someone with that same word. The problem is twofold:
a) people who make genuine misjudgements and mistakes are lumped in with actual bigots.
b) Piquet used that word in a context of racial abuse and claims he didn't because the word could be used for something different.
It's not that hard to find clean replacement words in rap lyrics if you need to. Depending on lyric content insert 'busta/fool/fam/homie/youngsta/loc/clown/people/folks/brotha/patna' here and be done with it. There's absolutely no need to say the n-word on a stream but I can't help other people think properly. Idiots gonna idiot
That's the biggest difference between Kyle Larson/Juri Vips doing dumb jokes on social media streams and Nelson Piquet actually racially abusing someone is that these incidents are seen as identical because they aren't. Piquet did way worse and he should at the very least be banned from the paddock for the rest of the season. He's not working for a team so there's no need in him being there anyway. For a team member, I'd said a hefty fine and a public apology is the remedy of choice.
Had he used that word about Hamilton as a compliment it'd been cringy but a lot less bad, it goes without saying. That being said, there's no way you can construe what he said in the specific circumstance as anything other than a dreadful racist insult. That's when he crossed all red lines either way you slice it.
For Red Bull, ditching Vips as the fall guy was a lot easier because he provided zero net value to the team. That being said, I don't like those precedents because if people genuinely fuck up by saying something silly without intending to insult a specific person or group they deserve a second chance. Context used to mean a lot more than it does now and that bothers me.