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Felipe Massa says he is looking at options to legally challenge the results of the 2008 championship, “not only for me, but for my friends, my country, my family, Ferrari and Ferrari fans”.
The finish of the 2008 Formula 1 season was one of the most unbelievable ends to an F1 season ever (at least until the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix).
Back in 2008 Lewis Hamilton (who was driving for McLaren at the time) beat out Felipe Massa for the championship title by one point, and he did it in the final corner of the final race of the season, while Massa was already celebrating his victory.
However, there was another controversial moment that happened earlier in the season, at that year’s Singapore Grand Prix. In Singapore, Renault’s Nelson Piquet Jr. deliberately crashed his car to help his team-mate Fernando Alonso win the race.
This also affected Massa and his title chances, as during the Safety Car period triggered by the crash, the Brazilian suffered a botched pit stop that dropped him down to 13th, while his title rival Hamilton managed to finish in P3.
At the time it wasn’t known that Piquet crashed on purpose, this was only revealed the following year. It was then that those allegedly involved in the planning of the crash were punished (Renault’s team boss Flavio Briatore and technical chief Pat Symonds).
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When this was made public, Massa wanted the Singapore GP to be cancelled, as it would also change the outcome of the championship, making him champion.
However, this was impossible under the International Sporting Code, as the outcome of the championship cannot be changed once the FIA Awards ceremony is complete.
The FIA’s investigation at the time also determined that Alonso and the wider Renault team did not know about the plan to crash Piquet’s car, so the governing body felt it would not be fair to change the result of the race.
However, during a recent F1-Insider interview, Bernie Ecclestone (the F1 boss at the time) claimed that he and Max Mosley (FIA president at the time) knew that the rules were breached before the end of the 2008 season, but decided not to do anything about it.
Having heard those remarks, Massa said he is considering legal action in hopes of overturning the result.
The Brazilian has since kept quiet on the situation, but when asked about it ahead of the Miami Grand Prix, he shed more light on the issue.
“I think the first thing when Bernie’s comment [came out] I was really, really surprised, for those comments,” Massa said.
“Because everybody knows what’s happened in the race, everything came out in 2009. We hear after that also that Charlie [Whiting] knew and Max [Mosley], so for me it’s the injustice for the sport.
“It shows that maybe every decision on the legal side, everything that happens, it was not correct on that situation.
“So I took the decision to study on the legal side everything that happened. I’m not doing this for money. I’m not doing this for anything.
“Because it’s not what I aim to, but I’m doing this for the justice. Not only for me, but for my friends, my country, my family, Ferrari and Ferrari fans, so in the end there are so many things.
“You know what a championship does for a country? You can develop the country, we don’t have Brazilian drivers now racing as well, so there are so many things.
“This is racing, everything that went wrong is part of the game. When you have a problem in the engine or when you have a mistake. You cannot really say ‘I was wrong because my engine broke down’, no.
“But what happened on that race is a different situation,” the Brazilian concluded.
