Felipe Massa is weighing up legal options to challenge the outcome of the 2008 world championship after former F1 CEO Bernie Ecclestone sensationally revealed he knew that that year’s Singapore Grand Prix had been fixed.
Former Ferrari driver Massa lost the title to McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton by a single point on the final lap of the last race of the year, the Brazilian Grand Prix, in one of the tightest championship battles in the sport’s history.
But that season is also remembered for the first Singapore Grand Prix, which has gone down in infamy for being fixed in one of Formula 1’s biggest cheating scandals, the so-called ‘crashgate’ affair.
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The struggling Renault team arranged for Nelson Piquet Junior to crash in the early laps of the race after teammate Fernando Alonso had made an early pit stop for new tyres and enough fuel to make it to the end of the race. Most of the rest of the field had to wait until the safety car withdrew before pitting under rules in force that year, which promoted Alonso to the front of the field for the team’s first victory of the year.
Massa had qualified on pole and was comfortably leading the race when the safety car was deployed, but in the chaos of pit lane activity immediately after the caution he was sent back out to the track before his fuel hose was detached.
He stopped at the end of the pit lane for his mechanics disconnected the hose and rejoined the race at the back of the field. He was subsequently given a drive-through penalty for an unsafe release and finished 13th and out of the points.
Hamilton finished third, collecting six points and extending his title lead to seven points.
It wasn’t until the following year when he was sacked that Piquet Junior revealed he’d been told to crash deliberately, roiling the sport in its most significant cheating scandal.
Massa subsequently urged the FIA to annul the result of the Singapore Grand Prix, which would have resulted in him winning the world title ahead of Hamilton, but the governing body’s International Sporting Code prevented a change in results once the trophies are handed out at the end-of-season awards ceremony.
The FIA’s 2009 investigation also found no-one other than Piquet Junior and team chiefs Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds knew about the fix, with race winner Alonso kept in the dark.
But remarks from Ecclestone to German website F1 Insider have cast doubt about how much was known about the crash in the immediate aftermath in 2008, when there would still have been time to potentially overturn the result.
“Max Mosley (the then FIA president) and I were informed during the 2008 season what had happened in the race in Singapore,” Ecclestone said. “Piquet Junior 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.
“We decided not to do anything at first. We wanted to protect the sport and save it from a huge scandal. That‘s why I used angelic tongues to persuade [his father] to keep calm for the time being.
“Back then there was a rule that a world championship classification after the FIA awards ceremony at the end of the year was untouchable. So Hamilton was presented with the world championship trophy and everything was fine.
“We had enough information in time to investigate the matter. According to the (FIA) statutes, we should have cancelled the race in Singapore under these conditions. That means it would never have happened for the world championship standings.
“Then Felipe Massa would have become world champion and not Lewis Hamilton.”
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The explosive claims were put to Massa, who said he would consider weighing up legal options to challenge the result in light of the new information.
“There is a rule that says that when a championship is decided, from the moment the driver receives the champion‘s trophy, things can no longer be changed, even if it has been proven a theft.” he told Autosport.
“At the time, Ferrari‘s lawyers told me about this rule. We went to other lawyers and the answer was that nothing could be done. So I logically believed in this situation.
“But after 15 years, we hear that the [former] owner of the category says that he found out in 2008, together with the president of the FIA, and they did nothing [so as] to not tarnish the name of F1.
“This is very sad, to know the result of this race was supposed to be cancelled and I would have a title. In the end I was the one who lost the most with this result. So we are going after it to understand all this.
“I intend to study the situation; study what the laws say, and the rules. We have to have an idea of what it is possible to do.”
While Massa recognised that he was unlikely to be able to reopen the case almost 15 years after the fact, he said it was important that justice was served.
“I would go after it thinking about justice,” he said. “I think if you‘ve been punished for something that wasn’t your fault and it’s the product of a robbery, a stolen race, justice has to be served.
“In fact the right situation is to cancel the result of that race. It is the only justice that can be done in a case like this.
“We have already seen other situations happening in sports, such as Lance Armstrong, who was proven to have doped, and he lost all the titles. What is the difference?”
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It’s unclear whether a civilian court can have jurisdiction over the results given all Formula 1 competitors agree that the FIA’s International Court of Appeal is the ultimate legal authority on sporting matters the as a condition of entry.
However, though rare, it’s not unheard of for F1 matters to be heard in civilian courts.
The decision of administrators to sell Force India to Lawrence Stroll was unsuccessfully challenged by Dmitry Mazepin in the UK High Court in 2020.
In 2015 Giedo van der Garde applied to the Victorian Supreme Court to have Sauber recognise his contract to race at that year’s Australian Grand Prix after the team reneged on a deal signed in the previous year in favour of fielding Felipe Nasr and Marcus Ericsson.
The court upheld his contract and a subsequent appeal by the team was rejected, forcing Sauber to settle with the Dutch driver.
Several sponsorship matters have also been heard in the court.
