Massa analyzes legal options for 2008 F1 title – 04/04/2023 – Sports

Brazilian driver Felipe Massa says he is studying legal options to be recognized as F1 world champion after Bernie Ecclestone, former boss of the category, admitted that, even during the 2008 season, he was aware of the scandal at the Singapore GP, but decided not exhibit at the time to protect the championship’s image.

The information about Massa’s intention was released this Tuesday (4th) by the Motosport website and confirmed by Sheet. According to the pilot, “he is not interested in the financial side of this story, but in justice”, he said in a note sent by his advisor.

“Singapore Race [em 2008] directly affected all of Brazilian motorsport. How could a world title have leveraged Brazilian motorsport over the last 15 years? We will never have that answer again,” he added.

That season, fellow Brazilian Nelson Piquet Jr purposely collided during the stage at the Marina Bay circuit to benefit his then teammate, Spaniard Fernando Alonso. When hitting the wall, the son of three-time world champion Nelson Piquet was following orders from his boss at Renault Flavio Briatore and engineer Pat Symonds, as he said in his testimony to the FIA ​​(International Automobile Federation).

Massa was leading the race at the time of the crash and, indirectly, ended up being harmed. As the race management triggered the yellow flag, Ferrari called him to the pits, but released him to return to the track without removing the refueling hose. The Brazilian ended up being punished and ended the race in 13th.

That year, he disputed the title point by point with the Englishman Lewis Hamilton, then at McLaren. The Englishman came third in Singapore and took the title in the last stage, in Brazil, by a difference of just one point.

In a recent interview with the German website F1 Insider, Ecclestone stated that he does not consider Hamilton as a seven-time champion precisely because of the controversy in Singapore. And he admitted that he and Max Mosley, the former head of the FIA, decided to hush up the case.

“We wanted to protect the sport and save it from a big scandal,” said the former F1 boss. “We had enough information at the time to investigate the matter. According to the statutes, we should have canceled the race in Singapore under these conditions. [o GP] would never have happened to the leaderboard. Felipe Massa would have been champion, not Lewis Hamilton,” he added.

At the time, there was a rule that the world championship standings were untouchable after the FIA ​​awards ceremony at the end of the year. The event was held on November 12, 2008, ten days after the Brazilian GP.

When the case was discovered, Briatore ended up banned from F1 in 2009, but the decision was reversed by the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris. Symonds was given a five-year ban and is currently F1’s technical director.

Nelsinho, in turn, was fired from Renault in 2009, but was not punished for the case as he contributed to the investigations through a whistleblower. Nelson’s son, however, never raced in the category again.

“If the two most powerful people, the boss of F1 and the boss of the FIA, knew in 2008 and kept silent, that is very serious and unacceptable for the sport”, shot Massa. “I see it with sadness as it is unfair and, I repeat, inadmissible for the sport. At the moment, I am studying what can be done.”