Felipe Massa sets sights on Lewis Hamilton’s title as legal hopes boosted

Felipe Massa’s legal team believe that they will take the 2008 World Championship from Lewis Hamilton after they commenced legal action against F1 and the FIA off the back of new revelations about the ‘Crashgate’ scandal.

Massa retired from F1 in 2017 as an icon of the sport and a true fan favourite, but not as a world champion. He came close in 2006 and then again in 2008, losing the title on the final lap of the 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix to Hamilton.

Earlier in the campaign, Massa saw a victory taken away from him at the Singapore Grand Prix as Fernando Alonso claimed his only win of the season. It later transpired that Renault had instructed the Spaniard’s team-mate, Nelson Piquet Jr, to crash deliberately and trigger a safety car, sparking one of the biggest controversies in F1 history.

Speaking to Motorsport.com, Bernardo Viana, who represents Massa as part of the Sao Pauli Vieira Rezende Advogados law firm, said: “The objective is to bring the trophy home. It’s not financial.

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“To get there, several measures will be taken with different aims, some to obtain information and others to obtain statements. We want everything that happened in 2008/2009 to come to light.

“We are quite confident in the evidence we have, without prejudice to the additional ones we are looking for, and without prejudice to everything that will come to light. We understand that there is even more information that has not been made public.”

While the ‘Crashgate’ scandal became public knowledge one year later in 2009, until recently it was believed that Bernie Ecclestone and the other F1 bosses were in the dark about Renault’s actions.

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However, in an interview with F1-Insider earlier this year, Ecclestone let slip that he could have investigated at the time. He said: “We had enough information in time to investigate the matter. According to the statutes, however, we would probably have had to cancel the race in Singapore under these conditions.”

Massa has now opened legal proceedings against the sport as he looks to correct the history books and take his maiden World Championship.

Viana is confident of the team that Massa has put together, continuing: “We assembled a stellar legal team across many areas and many jurisdictions to analyse things. We wanted to reach the conclusion if there was no claim or there was a claim. And we believe we have a strong case.”

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