Lewis Hamilton has already made his feelings clear on the 2008 controversy that saw him win the world title at Felipe Massa’s expense, with the former McLaren star claiming, earlier in his career, to be ‘surprised and shocked’ by notions of a robbery. The Brazilian reopened the can of worms recently by discussing the prospect of taking legal action after former F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone acknowledged that he may have made a mistake.
Massa retired from F1 in 2017 with 11 Grand Prix wins but no world titles. His best chance came in 2008 when, while at Ferrari, he lost out to McLaren’s Hamilton by a single point.
And the Brit’s maiden world title triumph wasn’t without controversy, either. An investigation concluded that Nelson Piquet Jr. deliberately crashed at the Singapore Grand Prix that year in a bid to help team-mate Fernando Alonso, prompting a botched pitstop from Massa’s Ferrari crew that saw him tumble down the pecking order as Hamilton capitalised.
Hamilton went on to win the Drivers’ Championship by an agonisingly narrow margin later in the season.”Everything that happened was robbery but nothing has happened in terms of the race,” said an exasperated Massa at the time. “The result didn’t change. This is not right. The robbery changed the championship. I lost [the title] by one point.”
Hamilton protested his innocence in 2009 by going on the offensive and addressing Massa’s strong claims. “I think all we can say is that it was a tough season, things happened and there were lots of ‘what-ifs’ throughout the season,” he said.
“We had quite a fair battle throughout and I’ve always found him to be a fair driver. So I’m a bit surprised and shocked to hear him say that, to be honest.” Fast-forward 14 years and it is clear that Massa is yet to live down the controversy which, many believe, cost him what would have been his only world title.
“I intend to study the situation; study what the laws say, and the rules,” he recently told Motorsport.com. “We have to have an idea of what is possible to do. I would never go after it thinking financially. I would go after it thinking about justice.
“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.”
Having stepped back from F1 in 2017, Ecclestone now admits that he and Max Mosley made a mistake by allowing the result to stand in an attempt to protect the sport from a scandal.
“According to the statutes, we should have cancelled the race in Singapore under these conditions,” he told F1-insider. “That means it would never have happened for the championship standings. And then Felipe Massa would have become world champion and not Lewis Hamilton.”
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