How Long Is Too Long? Filipe Massa’s Legal Challenge for the 2008 F1 Championship

By now most race fans will have heard that Filipe Massa has assembled a bicontinental crack legal team intent on forcing the FIA and Formula 1 to revisit the 2008 Driver’s Championship to remove Lewis Hamilton’s name from the record books and replace it with his own. What has not been widely discussed however is why Massa is even allowed to bring this claim in the first place despite 15 years having passed and the sporting regulations and Formula 1 precedent indicating that the matter should to be closed. Let’s discuss.

“Crashgate”

Heading into the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, the 15th race of the year on an 18-race calendar, Massa and Hamilton were engaged in a close battle for the driver’s championship. On lap 14 of the race, while Massa was winning, fellow Brazilian Nelson Piquet Jr. crashed his Renault into the wall bringing out a safety car. During the safety car Piquet’s teammate, Fernando Alonso was able to jump the field and continue on to win the race. Massa unfortunately would suffer a botched pitstop in which he left his pit box prior to his crew removing the refueling hose. The resulting scene of Massa driving down the pitlane with his severed fuel hose swinging in the wind and spewing race fuel over the pitlane remains one of the reasons why refueling is no longer a part of Formula 1 races. The incident left Massa to finish in 13th place, securing no championship points from the race.

Under normal circumstances this series of events would have been chalked up to racing incidents and likely never revisited again, however, the world would later discover that Piquet Jr.’s crash was on purpose, carried out at the instruction of his team principal in order to help Alonso win the race. This event would come to be known as “Crashgate.”

Fast forward to the final race of the 2008 season, the Brazil GP, where despite winning his home race and securing the final 10 driver’s championship points on offer, Massa would end up losing the 2008 driver’s championship to Hamilton by 1 point.

Revelations

Following the championship finale and Crashgate being discussed ad nauseam, the event would go on to become more of an accepted stain on Formula 1’s reputation, the perpetrators at Renault punished, but otherwise something to be moved on from and quickly put to rest for the benefit of the sport. However, during a 2022 interview, former head of Formula 1, Bernie Ecclestone, revealed that he and various other key personnel within F1 became aware of the nefarious circumstances behind Crashgate during the 2008 season, and arguably with enough time to take action prior to the end of the season and the appointment of Hamilton as the driver’s champion. Worse, it appears that Ecclestone and Formula 1 attempted to hide the facts surrounding Crashgate and were perfectly content to allow the championship results to stand despite the unjust rules violations that took place at Singapore.

Massa’s Claim

On August 15, 2023, Massa’s legal team filed a formal Letter Before Complaint with the UK courts. This pretrial procedural step indicated Massa’s intention to bring a civil claim against the FIA and Formula 1 for conspiracy to deny him the 2008 championship. Massa’s legal team believes that the proposed conspiracy to deny Massa the championship is not fundamentally part of the sport, but rather a carefully orchestrated plan to benefit some at the direct expense of Massa, both financially and reputationally. Massa himself has presented this claim as a way to advance sporting justice, with his legal team asking that the FIA and Formula 1 scrap the results of the 2008 Singapore GP and thereby rewrite the history books making Massa the 2008 drivers champion, and that the FIA and Formula 1 make restitution of lost earnings and wages which Massa most likely would have received had he been crowned champion in 2008… an amount which as of now is estimated to be north of Ten Million Dollars. As of this writing, the FIA and Formula 1 have until approximately mid-October, 2023 to respond. Massa’s legal team has made it abundantly clear that any delay in responding on the part of the FIA and Formula 1 will be met with a civil suit filed directly with the UK high courts.

Filing Timeline

The legal foundation underscoring Massa’s ability to bring this claim so many years after the conspiracy occurred rests with the Limitation Act of 1980. A bedrock of UK civil law framework, the act governs the time limits within which various civil claims can be pursued. Under the act, the general limitation period for most civil claims, including those related to contractual or tortious matters, is set at 6 years from the date on which the cause of action accrued, i.e. from the earliest time that the legal proceedings could first have been brought. This means that every fact which is required to commence an action must be in existence before the limitation period will start to run. In this instance, the facts necessary for Massa to commence his action against the FIA and Formula 1 did not become available until Ecclestone’s 2022 interview, well within the 6 year limitation afforded to Massa by the act.

Yet to be Determined

Although there have been many examples of bad acts on the part of a team or driver, or merely human error on the part of stewards or a race director which unduly influenced the outcome of a race (for the latter see the 2021 driver’s championship results decided at Abu Dhabi), never before had the resulting driver’s championship been so tightly decided or potentially influenced, or the evidence against such influence been so damning against the sporting body. Nevertheless, the standard protocol for Formula 1 and the governing FIA is that once a championship has been completed the record books are closed. Although I believe Massa’s legal team has a meritorious claim, I suspect that the FIA and Formula 1, in an effort to avoid opening Pandora’s box, will settle this matter out of court for a substantial, although undisclosed financial amount.

This should be a very interesting matter for all of us fans to follow along with….