Why Massa is trying to claim the 2008 drivers’ title in court
Brazilian wants justice after Hamilton pipped him by a point. Kevin Garside tells the story
Felipe Massa wants what he believes should be his: the 2008 F1 world title. He has filed a lawsuit in London against the FIA, Formula One’s ruling body; Formula One Management, which ran the sport at the time; and Bernie Ecclestone, who was the commercial rights holder, in order to try to achieve that.
Essentially, he is challenging what he claims is the combined failure of the regulatory body and the sport’s owners to cancel the results of the inaugural Singapore Grand Prix, in which Nelson Piquet Jnr deliberately crashed his Renault to aid teammate Fernando Alonso’s prospects of winning, which Alonso duly did.
Massa lost out in the championship race by a point to Lewis Hamilton in a dramatic finale.
When Massa took the chequered flag in the final race of the 2008 season, at Interlagos in his home country of Brazil, he sincerely believed he was the champion, not realising until he was rounding the Curva do Sol on his slowdown lap that Hamilton had passed Timo Glock’s Toyota in the final corners to claim fifth place and the points he needed to take his first world crown.
Massa was devastated, but magnanimous in defeat.
SO WHY IS MASSA ACTING NOW?
The truth of what happened in Singapore did not emerge until Piquet Jnr left the team the following year and told how the team principal Flavio Briatore and engineer Pat Symonds had staged the whole thing.
In September 2009 the FIA charged Renault with conspiracy and race-fixing and ordered the guilty parties to appear before the World Motor Sport Council. Renault had intended to fight the claims before accepting the charges, informing the FIA that Briatore and Symonds had left the team. Briatore was banned for life and Symonds for five years, later reduced on appeal, but the FIA allowed the race result to stand.
That appeared to be that, until Ecclestone revealed in an interview given to F1 Insider last year that the details of the crash were known to the authorities in 2008, and not as previously stated at the point of Piquet Jnr’s revelation in August 2009. “Max Mosley and I were informed during the 2008 season what had happened in the race in Singapore,” Ecclestone was quoted as saying. “Piquet Jnr had told his father Nelson that he had been asked by the team to drive into the wall at a certain point in order to trigger a safety car phase and such to help his teammate Alonso.
“Piquet Jnr was worried about his contract extension, so he was under a lot of pressure and agreed. We decided not to do anything for now. We wanted to protect the sport and save it from a huge scandal. That’s why I used angelic tongues to persuade my former driver Nelson Piquet to keep calm for the time being.”
Ecclestone later distanced himself from that version of events, claiming he didn’t remember the interview, but that did not stop Massa pursuing his case.
HOW DID THE CRASH AFFECT MASSA’S CHANCES?
Theoretically the drivers were affected equally by being forced to respond to the incident. Massa, along with most of the drivers in the race, came into the pits behind the safety car after the crash.
Though Massa was leading at the time of the incident on the 15th lap, he left the Ferrari pit box with the fuel hose still attached and had to stop at the end of the pit lane to allow the mechanics to remove it.
He was later hit with a penalty for an unsafe release and finished outside the points. Hamilton finished third to claim six points.
Massa argues that had the incident been investigated when the truth was discovered by the authorities in 2008, and the results annulled, he would have won the championship by five points. That’s the maths of the matter.
Massa’s lawyers have asked for all documentation relating to the race and the subsequent FIA investigation to be made available, claiming their client was the “victim of a conspiracy” with the authorities seeking to avoid a scandal.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
Papers were filed at the High Court in London on Monday. Massa insists he is fighting for justice and the integrity of the sport.
Even if the truth of Ecclestone’s anecdotal timeline is established, it would have still required retrospective action.
And it doesn’t alter the fact that the FIA considered the case, albeit the following year, and elected not to change the outcome.
A court ruling in favour of Massa would open a panoply of retrospective cases seeking to right sporting wrongs.
You can imagine Hamilton being the first to file papers with regard to Abu Dhabi in 2021, where he lost the world title to Max Verstappen following a safety car incident that did not conform to FIA regulations.
England would, perhaps, seek redress for Diego Maradona’s illegal Hand of God goal that knocked them out of the 1986 football World Cup. Similarly West Germany, who lost out to England in 1966 to a goal by Geoff Hurst that VAR would have ruled out today, could lay claim to a fifth World Cup.