F1 and former supremo Bernie Ecclestone have been ordered to pay close to $500,000 of Felipe Massa’s legal fees as his fight for the 2008 championship continues.
The former Ferrari driver has been in litigation with F1, the FIA and Ecclestone since 2023 over claims he was the ‘rightful 2008 champion’.
Massa famously lost that year’s championship by a single point, after Lewis Hamilton made a move on the final corner of the final lap of the final race – Massa’s home race in Brazil – to finish fifth. Massa had won the race, and was champion for about 30 seconds until Hamilton crossed the line.
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Massa is suing Formula 1, the FIA and Ecclestone in the London High Court for $120m in lost revenue he claimed he would have been able to earn through endorsements had he been world champion.
Felipe Massa was world champion for about 30 seconds. LAT Images
In his 2023 letter, Massa accused the three parties of ‘conspiring to prevent him from winning the 2008 title’. They were this week ordered to pay $480,000 (£250,000).
Massa’s claim is centred around the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix and the subsequent Crashgate scandal.
On lap 15, Nelson Piquet Jr was instructed to deliberately crash his Renault in order to bring out the safety car, which eventually allowed teammate Fernando Alonso to win the race.
In the subsequent safety car for Piquet’s crash, Massa’s pitstop was disastrous, and he attempted to leave the pits with the refuelling rig still attached.
Massa finished 13th and failed to score a point. Hamilton finished third. Piquet made the explosive allegations after he was sacked by the team 12 months later. It eventually led to lifetime bans from the sport for then-principal Flavio Briatore and engineer Pat Symonds. Both have since been lifted, and Briatore is once again team boss of the same team, now known as Alpine.
Massa argues given the race was deliberately manipulated, the results should be scratched from history, which would give him the championship by five points.
He also claims Ecclestone and other top F1 officials knew immediately Piquet Jr had crashed deliberately, and that they had conspired to keep the truth under wraps to avoid embarrassment.