F1: Massa explains why he wants to overturn Hamilton's illegitimate 2008 championship

–by Mark Cipolloni–

The only reason why Lewis Hamilton was crowned 2008 F1 champion by a single point was because Nelson Piquet Jr. crashed his car deliberately in the Singapore GP so his teammate Fernando Alonso could win the race.

This much has been documented and admitted by all parties. However, the results of the race were never nullified, as Bernie Ecclestone said they should have been. If the FIA did that, Felipe Massa would be champion.

Felipe Massa is now pursuing legal action to get the title away from Hamilton that was rightly his.

Speaking for the first time on camera since Ecclestone’s comments, Massa exclusively told Sky Sports: “You fight them to the last corner of the last race, pass the checkered flag as the champion and then everything changed.

“Then you discover what has happened in Singapore. People, important people like Bernie, like Max Mosley, like Charlie Whiting – they knew in 2008 and they didn’t do anything.

“That is really a massive surprise for me. It’s really [an] injustice and I think definitely we need to study everything that happened because It’s not fair what has happened.”

Massa: I’m not doing it for the money

“I’m not doing this for money,” Massa told RacingNews365. “I’m not doing this for anything. Because it’s not what I aim to, but I’m doing this for the justice. Not only for me, but for my friends, my country, my family, Ferrari and Ferrari fans, so in the end there are so many things.”

“You also know what a championship does for a country? You can develop the country, we don’t have Brazilian drivers now racing as well, so there are so many things.”

“This is racing, everything that went wrong is part of the game. When you have a problem in the engine or when you have a mistake. You cannot really say ‘I was wrong because my engine broke down’ No. But what happened on that race is a different situation.

“I cannot say anything, we are studying everything for the moment,” he reiterated. “Those instructions have been given to me.”