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Massa lost the title that year in a dramatic finale to Lewis Hamilton, who famously overtook Timo Glock on the run out of the final corner of the final lap of the final race.
It created a surreal sequence of events where Massa, who won the race, looked to have claimed the title, only for Hamilton to scrape through to steal it away in the seconds that followed.
However, the Brazilian driver’s grievance does not focus on that event and instead relates to that year’s Singapore Grand Prix, where Renault influenced the outcome.
In Marina Bay, Nelson Piquet was instructed to crash his car at a specific location in order to better the chances of team-mate Fernando Alonso.
As instructed, Piquet crashed while Alonso benefitted from the resulting Safety Car to win the race.
Hamilton finished third in the race, while Massa could do no better than 13th after a pit stop error saw him pull away with the fuel hose still attached to his Ferrari.
It only came to light well after the fact that the race had, effectively, been rigged.
Piquet made the revelation once he was sacked from the team during the 2009 season, which prompted an investigation into the matter.
That saw Renault team boss Flavio Briatore and technical director Pat Symonds handed lifetime bans from the sport – later overturned by a French court.
More recently, F1’s former commercial boss Bernie Ecclestone admitted he knew of the allegations before the conclusion of the 2008 season.
And so, more than 15 years after Hamilton was crowned world champion in Brazil, Massa has launched legal action.
The 42-year-old is seeking £64 million in damages, his estimate for the income lost by not winning the 2008 title.
His argument centres on the fact the FIA could have intervened before the prize-giving ceremony that year but did not.
As a result, the race result stood, and Hamilton was crowned – a fact that now cannot be challenged.
Since he cannot be crowned world champion, Massa is instead seeking damages.
However, the logic appears based on the false premise that the FIA could have done something about the outcome of the Singapore Grand Prix.
Massa’s case hangs on the fact that the FIA could have acted before the FIA prize-giving ceremony and, had it done, the outcome of the world championship may have been different.
That belief, and the legal challenge it has launched, is born from the notion that the result of the Singapore Grand Prix could be annulled.
Under the regulations, there is no facility for race results to be annulled, a point that was proven in court earlier this year.
A recent outcome from the FIA International Court of Appeal has relevance to Massa’s plight as it ruled on the ability of officials to annul race results.
That particular document relates to a GT race held in Austria last year, where a mismanaged Safety Car impacted the outcome of a race.
At the time, Team Motopark was disadvantaged under the Safety Car with a series of protests and appeals eventually landing the matter in front of the International Court of Appeal.
During those appeals, the Spanish motorsport authority (which governs the International GT Open competition) annulled the race classification, a point the ICA noted it did not have the authority to do.
A 24-page document published by the FIA on the outcome of that hearing noted that “neither the Stewards nor the NCA had the power to cancel the Race.”
It is important to note that while the neither Stewards nor the local governing body had the power to annul the race, the International Court of Appeal does under the FIA’s Judicial and Disciplinary Rules.
“The ICA has all the decision-making powers of the authority that took the contested decision,” declares Article 10.11.1 of the JDRs states.
It is followed by 10.11.2, which adds: “In addition, the ICA may admit or dismiss the appeal, in whole or in part, and may decide to confirm, waive or mitigate the penalty inflicted. It may also increase such a penalty, unless the appeal has only been lodged by the party being subject of the appealed decision. Finally, it may annul or amend the results of a competition, but it is not empowered to order any competition to be re-run.”
However, the process to bring the matter to the ISC can only the commenced by a competitor, a point laid out in Article 13.1.1 of the ISC: “The right to protest lies only with a Competitor.”
As no competitor lodged a protest, the Singapore result could never have escalated to the International Court of Appeal and hence could never have been annulled.
Of course, there are moral questions that the scenario doesn’t answer, such as whether Ecclestone or any other individuals who knew of the collusion should have informed a competitor.
Whether that would have led to anything is unlikely as the ICA, in its decision earlier this year, noted the underlying premise of “sporting fairness” in the International Sporting Code.
In that instance, the underlying fundamental premise prevented the International Court of Appeal from amending the classification, as it would have impacted more teams and drivers than it otherwise did.
Applying that to the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, annulling the result would have impacted all teams – more than just Massa or any single competitor.
But there’s also another fundamental point that the legal challenge ignores, and that is the simple fact the 2008 Formula 1 season was contested over 18 races.
None of those events were more meaningful or worth more than any other, making Massa’s failure to score points in Singapore no different than his engine failures in Hungary and Australia, or his own performances in Silverstone and Malaysia.
His championship loss was not down to a specific event but the culmination of all 18 events.
To cite Singapore as the reason he was not champion is to take a distorted and simplistic view on the matter.
If he’s looking to take legal action against the FIA and F1, he should by rights lodge a similar complaint against Ferrari for its failure to provide him with a suitable engine at the Hungarian and Australian Grands Prix.
Given that, and the inability of the sport’s regulators to have made any change to the results anyway, Massa faces an uphill struggle to win his legal battle.
