Felipe Massa used to race in Formula 1, and now he’s suing the people who run the sport. The Brazilian driver says a crash that happened on purpose 17 years ago cost him the world championship. He lost by just one point that year, and he wants $84.2 million for what he missed out on.
According to The Athletic, he’s going after the FIA, which controls motorsport around the world, along with Formula One Management and Bernie Ecclestone, who used to be in charge of F1. What happened was pretty wild. Back in September 2008, Massa was winning the race in Singapore. Then on lap 14, another driver named Nelson Piquet Jr crashed his car into a wall. It looked like a normal accident at first.
But the crash made officials bring out a safety car, which messed up the whole race. Massa ended up in 13th place and got no points. Meanwhile, Piquet Jr’s teammate Fernando Alonso won the race. When the season ended, Massa came in second place, losing the championship to Lewis Hamilton by a single point.
This scandal sat hidden for way too long
Massa’s lawyer spoke in a London court this week and said something pretty serious. Nick De Marco told the judge that the people running Formula 1 knew what really happened but chose to hide it. He called it “one of the biggest sporting scandals in history” and accused them of working together to cover up what went down in Singapore.
The truth didn’t come out until a year later. That’s when Piquet Jr admitted that his team told him to crash on purpose. His bosses, Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds, wanted him to do it so Alonso could win. Renault got banned from F1 for two years, but the ban never actually happened.
Briatore got kicked out of the sport for life, and Symonds got a five-year ban. Later on, those punishments got thrown out and both men came back to racing. Much like other major sports controversies that emerged years after the fact, the truth about what happened in Singapore took time to surface.
So why is Massa only suing now? Well, in 2023, Ecclestone did an interview where he said something that caught everyone’s attention. He basically admitted that he and Max Mosley, who ran the FIA back then, knew about the crash but decided to keep quiet. Ecclestone said they wanted to protect the sport from a huge scandal. He even said the rules probably meant they should have cancelled the Singapore race completely. That interview was the first time Massa realized there might have been a cover-up.
The people Massa is suing don’t want this case to go forward. They say too much time has passed and Massa can’t prove the crash is why he lost the championship. Ecclestone’s lawyers told the court that Massa messed up on his own during that race. He drove away from his pit stop while the fuel hose was still connected to his car, which was a huge mistake.
The FIA’s lawyer says Massa knew enough back in 2009 to file a lawsuit then, so it’s too late now. The lawyer for Formula One Management put it pretty bluntly. She said Massa lost because he was racing against Hamilton, who’s now considered one of the best drivers ever. In sports, one bad night can completely change everything, and that’s exactly what Massa is arguing happened to him in Singapore.
The court hearing wraps up on Friday. The judge will make a decision sometime later. No matter what happens, this case brings up a big question about what should happen when the people in charge of a sport know about cheating but don’t do anything about it.
Published: Oct 30, 2025 07:00 pm