High Court battle over 2008 Lewis Hamilton championship begins in London

The time has come for Felipe Massa to have his day in court over one of the most controversial moments in F1 history.

'Crashgate', a scandal which saw Nelson Piquet Jr. deliberately crash his Renault to give team-mate Fernando Alonso a sporting advantage in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, indirectly robbed Massa of the world championship that year.

You can read a full explanation of Crashgate and how it affected that year's title race, but a key moment came in 2023, when former F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone gave an interview in which he appeared to admit that he and then-FIA boss Max Mosley swept the incident under the rug deliberately, in order to avoid a championship-altering scandal.

“We wanted to protect the sport and save it from a huge scandal," he told F1-Insider. "That’s why I used angelic tongues to persuade my former driver Nelson Piquet to keep calm for the time being.

“We had enough information in time to investigate the matter. According to the statutes, we should have cancelled the race in Singapore under these conditions.

“That means it would never have happened for the championship standings. And then Felipe Massa would have become world champion and not Lewis Hamilton.”

Ecclestone denies 2008 title conspiracy

Ecclestone has since both denied memory of the interview and claimed the interviewer's 'English wasn’t that good', but the existence of the story opened the door for Massa to bring the case to court.

The former Ferrari man is suing for £60m in damages from F1, the FIA and Ecclestone over the claim that they conspired to deny him what would have been his first and only world championship.

95-year-old Ecclestone told The Times last month: “There is no way in the world anyone could change or cancel that race. There is always something going on where someone would like to cancel it if they could.

“To try to persuade the president of the FIA to call a special meeting where the FIA would have to cancel the race – there were no provisions for that to happen.

“Max [Mosley] knew there was not enough evidence at the time to do anything. It only started later when young Nelson decided he wanted to say something when he found out he was not going to get a seat for the following year.

“Max was not saying we should cover this up but just that it was not good for the image of Formula 1.”

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