EX-FORMULA One driver Felipe Massa’s £64 million claim against F1, its governing body the FIA and Bernie Ecclestone can go to trial, a High Court judge has ruled.
Lewis Hamilton‘s first F1 world championship in 2008 is the subject of legal action, with Brazilian Massa saying he is the rightful winner of the title.
Massa lost by a single point after Nelson Piquet Jr. is alleged to have deliberately crashed at the Singapore Grand Prix.
Ecclestone, who was F1 boss for four decades before he was deposed in 2017, suggested in 2023 that the sport’s executives were aware of the cover-up before the 2008 campaign concluded.
Ecclestone, the FIA and Formula One Management are defending the claims.
Last month, they asked the court in London to throw out the case, arguing that Massa performed poorly in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, ultimately leading to him losing the championship, and arguing that the claim had been brought too late.
In a written judgment handed down on Thursday, the court decided the case could go ahead.
At a hearing in October, the court heard that as part of his claim, Massa was also seeking various declarations regarding the FIA’s conduct.
But the court has also decided that whatever the result of the lawsuit, Lewis Hamilton’s world title win will not officially be reversed.
“The present claim cannot of course rewrite the outcome of the 2008 drivers’ world championship, but if declaratory relief along the lines sought were granted that is how Mr Massa would present his victory to the world and it is also how it would be perceived by the public.
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“The second declaration is in the terms that were it not for the FIA’s breaches of duty, Mr Massa would have won the championship: in other words, that he should have won the championship.
“The FIA, as an international sporting body outside the reach of this Court, could and would simply ignore any such declaration.
“That underscores its lack of practical utility, but the declaration comes too close in my view to impinging on the right of the FIA to govern its own affairs.”
At the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, Renault staged a win for Fernando Alonso by ordering Nelson Piquet Jr to crash, which brought out a safety car and meant Massa, who was leading the race for Ferrari, finished in 13th after his strategy was compromised.
The following season, Piquet staggeringly revealed he had been under instruction by his bosses to crash deliberately.
Massa’s lawyers claim Ecclestone knew the crash was deliberate and that he and the FIA failed to investigate it.
At the October hearing, Nick De Marco KC, for Massa, said in written submissions that the defendants could not “establish that Mr Massa’s claims have no real prospect of success”.
Adding that Massa had “a real prospect of succeeding on all of the grounds”, he said the matter should go to a full trial.
