– Felipe Massa has achieved an important partial victory in a British court in the legal dispute over the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship. The defendants – Formula 1 Management (FOM), the world governing body for motor sports (FIA), and former series boss Bernie Ecclestone – must pay Massa part of the legal costs: approximately 290.000 Euro.
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But Massa and his lawyers want to achieve even more: they are demanding that no further appeals be allowed and that the case now be heard in court quickly. Furthermore, they want to ensure that the defendants must disclose all relevant evidence. This includes documents that have not yet been presented in court. Witness statements are also intended to support Massa’s claims.
The former Formula 1 driver accuses FOM, FIA, and Ecclestone of having known about the events at the Singapore Grand Prix 2008 before the incident became known as “Crashgate.” The defendants are alleged to have covered up the intentionally caused accident of Nelson Piquet.
What this legal dispute is exactly about
“I want to prove in court that they conspired to hide the truth, and I will use all legal means to ensure that this injustice is corrected,” Massa explained. “Formula 1 is the biggest sport in the world, but it is crucial that it is also the fairest.”
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Therefore, Massa filed a lawsuit against FOM, FIA, and Ecclestone, but the legal dispute has already been dragging on for several years. Ironically, Ecclestone himself provided the impetus in 2023: he said in an interview with F1-Insider.com: “We had enough information to investigate the matter. We should have canceled the race.”
He and the then FIA President Max Mosley had, however, decided to “protect Formula 1 and save it from a major scandal,” according to Ecclestone in the same interview. About a year after the Grand Prix, however, Piquet made the incident public. The FIA subsequently issued sanctions against the masterminds but left the race result unchanged.
As Ecclestone himself said: “If we had canceled Singapore, the race would not have counted for the overall standings. Then Felipe Massa would have become Formula 1 World Champion – and not Lewis Hamilton.” Therefore, Massa is now demanding damages in the mid-double-digit millions.
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