Felipe Massa can proceed with parts of his £64million legal action over the “conspiracy” he alleges denied him the 2008 F1 title, as both sides claim a key legal ruling as a victory.
Massa argues he is the “victim of skullduggery” following Renault’s Crashgate scandal in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix and an alleged subsequent Bernie Ecclestone-Max Mosley cover-up to keep the truth under wraps until it was too late for Massa to do anything about it.
He had claimed damages and declaratory relief, which meant he wanted an admission he is the rightful 2008 world champion and not Lewis Hamilton.
This week came a significant development as a UK High Court judge handed down his verdict on whether Massa had any real prospect of success and if the case could go to full trial.
Here is everything you know from a fascinating judgement.
What happened this week
The key takeaway is that Massa has proven he has a realistic chance of succeeding in court in some areas of his controversial legal action against F1, the FIA and former F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone, while other aspects have already been thrown out.
The defendants say that Massa’s claims are misconceived and brought well out of time. So, in response to Massa’s claim, they applied for a ruling that Massa had no real prospect of success and therefore the case should not go to trial.
Taking this procedural route to get Massa’s claims struck out early, and failing to do so entirely, makes the ruling from the Honourable Mr Justice Jay a big development.
It is important to stress early on that not every aspect of Massa’s case or the arguments either way have been fully presented, scrutinised here or passed judgement on.
As the judge stressed, this was not a mini-trial despite defendant submissions that he described as “unnecessarily elaborate and complex”.
An alternative approach could have been pursuing it as a preliminary issue: essentially a small standalone trial with full evidence, witnesses, disclosure and so on.
The defendants presumably wanted to avoid this for the same reasons they don’t want it to end up as a complete court case – it’s unnecessary, expensive and controversial as more will come out in public.
That left it open for the judge to rule on, though. And his verdict, handed down on November 20th, leaves the door open for Massa’s big day in court, and gives some early clues for where the main arguments will be.
What are Massa’s claims?
What was heard in court on this occasion related to Massa’s various claims: breach of contract against the FIA alone; an act of inducing breach of contract against FOM and Ecclestone; an act of “unlawful means” conspiracy against all three, and a claim brought against the FIA founded on breaches of duty owed under its Statutes.
The essential facts here relate to Massa losing crucial points when Renault orchestrated the deliberate crash of Nelson Piquet Jr to assist team-mate Fernando Alonso to victory.
When race leader Massa made a pitstop during the safety car period triggered by Piquet’s crash, he rejoined with the fuel nozzle still attached, and then had to serve a penalty for the unsafe release.
Massa finished a point-less 13th while Hamilton was third - giving Hamilton a six-point gain in a championship he famously won by a single point.
The following year, the Crashgate scandal was exposed, Renault and the perpetrators were punished, but there was no after-the-fact sporting remedy.
Massa argues the race should have been annulled, or the 2008 points adjusted in another way.
These centre on Ecclestone and former FIA president Mosley allegedly covering up the emergence of the crash scandal.
Massa’s case goes that Nelson Piquet Sr told then FIA race director Charlie Whiting at the end of 2008 that the Singapore crash was deliberate, Whiting then informed Mosley - and that Whiting and/or Mosley told Ecclestone; but the information was deliberately concealed.
It was known back in 2009 and the time of the original WMSC trial that Piquet had spoken to an FIA official in 2008, which was Whiting. But the short version was the FIA didn’t have enough evidence to act on.
The crucial interview
In 2023, quotes from Ecclestone were published by F1 Insider in which Ecclestone allegedly claimed he and Mosley were both informed during 2008 what happened in Singapore, and then suppressed the information.
In the court’s own translation of the interview, published in German, Ecclestone said they “decided not to do anything for the time being”; “wanted to protect the sport and save it from a huge scandal” and that Ecclestone “used every last power of persuasion I had” with Piquet Sr to “get him to keep calm” - the older Piquet being a champion with the Brabham team that Ecclestone once owned and Whiting worked for.
Ecclestone supposedly added that “we had enough information in good time to have investigated the matter” and “we would probably have had to annul the race in Singapore in those circumstances”.
The judge pointed out that, at trial, some of these facts would be contested and that Ecclestone does not accept this interview is a “a true and accurate reflection of his state of mind”.
In other words, the quotes in question, from an interview conducted in English then translated into German before being published, are being contested in some way.
But the judge admitted this interview is the moment “we can join up the dots by drawing an irresistible inference” that Mosley would have told Ecclestone at the time, something that Massa could not have reasonably known before 2023 - even if he suspected it.
This is crucial to one of Massa’s claims proceeding to court.
Massa’s ‘tremendous victory’
Massa called the judgement a “tremendous victory” and a “great day for me, for justice, and for everyone who loves Formula 1”.
Though some aspects have been defeated, he can still pursue his big money claim - which he says reflects the difference in salary he would have received in subsequent years and the loss of sponsorship and other commercial opportunities.
An effort to get the claims thrown out on the grounds of a time limit failed entirely.
It was argued that Massa should have acted after the original 2009 WMSC decision and that Massa’s alleged losses were caused by his own failure to appeal to the International Court of Appeal – which the defence submitted broke the chain (of causation).
This failed as the judge said the defendants needed to prove that Massa would have won that appeal - not just that he might have. And the judge can’t reach that conclusion in this forum.
In addition, the content of the failed breach of contract claims still supplies the “unlawful means” part of Massa’s conspiracy claim - which along with the inducement claim survives because the judge says Massa has a real prospect of proving a statute of limitation period of six years should be extended.
It was felt that what material existed in the public domain at the time did not necessarily put Massa, or a reasonable person, on notice of a conspiracy to avoid a timely 2008 investigation.
But the Ecclestone 2023 interview changed things. So the judge essentially finds that Massa has a real prospect of proving that there was deliberate concealment.
If he wins this at trial, it would mean instead of Massa having six years from 2009 to take action, the clock only begins from 2023.
Bid for title recognition killed
This is a judgement that both sides are heralding as a win, hence the FIA’s triumphant press release on Thursday that it had succeeded in summary judgement application against Massa.
Killing the claim for declarations is the most significant victory on the part of the defendants. This relates to Massa seeking acknowledgement he was wronged.
It has long been accepted there is no recourse for Massa to actually be given that title. But he wanted it symbolically in the form of a declaration that the FIA acted in breach of its own regulations in failing to investigate the circumstances of the crash promptly in 2008, and crucially a declaration that if the FIA had not acted in breach of its own regulations, it would have cancelled or adjusted the results of the Singapore Grand Prix with the consequence that Massa would have won the drivers’ championship in 2008.
His case is that this is the most effective means of doing justice -"remedying an historic injustice” without overruling the results. This was also essentially used to argue against the defendants’ objection that this would wrongly interfere with the FIA’s exclusive jurisdiction over sporting disputes.
But it actually worked against Massa, who the judge described as “caught on the horns of a self-imposed dilemma”.
The judge reached the “firm conclusion” that declaratory relief would not be granted at trial as the courts will not entertain cases which serve no sufficient or legitimate legal purpose.
Massa seems to accept that any declaration would not have any legal and practical effect on the FIA because he knows it wouldn’t actually change anything in real terms. And he is not entitled to claim declaratory relief just for reputational or publicity reasons.
Rewriting the outcome of the 2008 drivers’ world championship would be how Massa “would present his victory to the world”, the judge said, and is “how it would be perceived by the public”.
It would also come too close to impinging on the right of the FIA to govern its own affairs.
Another defence that succeeded related to a breach of contract claim, while Massa’s claim against the FIA for breach of duty left the judge with “serious doubts”.
The judge ruled that the breach of contract claim wouldn’t continue to trial as there was no real prospect of success and the statute of limitations had passed. He also found that duties were not owed by the FIA to Massa personally, only to FIA members.
As far as the FIA’s concerned, it’s a win that any full trial will now only occur on what it calls “significantly narrowed grounds” – and that the judge expressed “serious doubts” about the standalone claim against the FIA, which is governed by French law.
Massa’s been advised to abandon that, or obtain further French law expert evidence to support before getting approval from the judge to pursue that further.
Some hurdles that remain
The fact this case isn’t dead means there are surely going to be more fascinating developments to come.
But the judge has noted several potential obstacles to Massa succeeding at trial.
It was not the purpose of this hearing, for example, to consider whether the true cause of Massa scoring no points in Singapore, and therefore not winning the title, was not the Piquet crash but Ferrari’s disastrous pitstop.
The judge has also raised the prospect of what could realistically have been achieved any sooner, or any more significantly, than the WMSC ruling in 2009.
This includes whether there was any real prospect of the case ever coming before the WMSC in 2008, given Piquet remained under contract with Renault at the time so would not have cooperated the way he did after being fired a year later.
And the judge said it could be argued the 2009 decision was a signpost that the WMSC would not have reached a different decision in 2008 anyway, much less a decision which would have resulted in Massa winning the championship.
Other potential remedies rather than just ‘null and void the Singapore race’ could also have been pursued in the interest of fairness to other parties including Hamilton.
And the judge raised the question of if there was a WMSC decision in 2008, and Massa lost, there may not have been any real prospect of a successful appeal to the ICA.
This, and a lot more, is ultimately for a full trial to wade into.
The judge simply felt compelled to stress these hurdles now because “this litigation would not necessarily be plain sailing for Massa were this case to go to trial” and he didn’t want “the impression to be gained that I am oblivious to at least the possible obstacles”.
