Felipe Massa’s efforts to bring a legal challenge over his 2008 world championship defeat were instigated by former Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone, according to two-times world champion Emerson Fittipaldi.
The 2008 championship runner-up is reported to have assembled a legal team to look into the FIA’s response to that year’s Singapore Grand Prix. Massa’s move followed Ecclestone’s claim that he and then-FIA president Max Mosley could have taken earlier action over the outcome of the controversial race.
Fernando Alonso won the race after his Renault team instructed Nelson Piquet Jnr to crash their other car, in order to trigger a Safety Car period which his team mate had been primed to benefit from.
Massa led eventual champion Lewis Hamilton in the early stages of the race, but failed to score after his Ferrari team botched his pit stop when the drivers pitted in response to the Safety Car period Piquet deliberately caused. Hamilton finished the race third, out-scored Massa by six points and went on to win the title by one.
Ecclestone claimed last month the FIA “had enough information in time to investigate the matter” and they “should have cancelled the race in Singapore under these conditions.”
“That means it would never have happened for the world championship standings,” Ecclestone said. “Then Felipe Massa would have become world champion and not Lewis Hamilton.”
Ecclestone clashed with Hamilton last year after the 92-year-old defended his former driver Nelson Piquet – the father of the ‘Crashgate’ conspirator – over racist comments he made about the seven-times world champion. In response Hamilton said “older voices” should not be given a platform.
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Fittipaldi believes Ecclestone made his comments about the race purposefully to generate headlines. “I think who started this was Bernie Ecclestone,” Fittipaldi told The Mirror.
“Typical Bernie! Bernie wanted to create a polemic and this polemic that he’s creating, it’s just to generate some news.”
Fittipaldi said Massa’s chances of out-scoring Hamilton in Singapore were ultimately undone by Ferrari’s pit stop error.
“When you go backwards, in that race, Ferrari made a mistake during a pit stop,” he said. “That means the result of the race would not change a lot. It’s so difficult to reverse that. That’s my personal opinion.”
However Fittipaldi stressed he is “100 percent pro-Felipe Massa, for…
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