Felipe Massa vs F1: What's happened so far

The London High Court has opened hearings in Felipe Massa’s long-awaited legal challenge over the 2008 Formula One World Championship — a case that could redefine how far the courts can reach into sport’s most sacred results.

Massa, the former Ferrari driver who lost the 2008 title to Lewis Hamilton by a single point, claims the FIA and Formula One Management failed in their duty to uphold the sport’s integrity by covering up the “Crashgate” scandal at that year’s Singapore Grand Prix.

His lawyers argue that had the race been properly investigated or annulled, Massa, not Hamilton, would have been champion.

On the opening day, Massa sat in the public gallery as his barrister, Nick De Marco KC, declared that “the deliberate crash constituted one of the biggest sporting scandals in history.”

He told the court that senior officials, including Bernie Ecclestone and then-FIA president Max Mosley, “deliberately conspired together to cover up one of the most serious scandals in the history of sport.”

Massa’s team maintains that it was only after Ecclestone’s 2023 interview, in which he appeared to admit prior knowledge of the deliberate crash, that the full extent of the alleged concealment became clear.

As De Marco told the judge, “That interview was the first time it became apparent to Mr Massa, and those advising him, that there had been a deliberate concealment of a conspiracy that was known at the time by those who had concealed it.”

The defence teams for the FIA, FOM, and Ecclestone hit back sharply.

Their written submission described the claim as “a misguided attempt to reopen the results of the 2008 F1 drivers’ championship,” adding that it was “as torturous as it is overly ambitious.”

They insist the case is time-barred  and filed far too late, claiming that Massa’s own “catalogue of errors,” including Ferrari’s pit-stop disaster in Singapore, were the true cause of his championship loss.