Bernie Ecclestone has hit out at Felipe Massa for daring to mount a legal challenge to the outcome of the 2008 world championship.
Brazilian Massa, now retired from Formula 1 and 42, admits that it was former F1 CEO Ecclestone’s admission that key figures knew about the ’crashgate’ scandal before the 2008 ended that triggered his push for justice.
"We want to bring home the trophy," Massa’s lawyer Bernardo Viana is quoted by La Gazzetta dello Sport this week.
"It’s not about money. As Ecclestone himself admitted, the results of (the 2008) Singapore (GP) should have been cancelled completely."
If that had happened, Massa would mathematically have been the 2008 world champion - rather than Lewis Hamilton, who officially won by a single point.
92-year-old former F1 supremo Ecclestone, however, questions Massa’s motives.
"The Massa clan is only interested in the money," he told Roger Benoit, the veteran correspondent for the Swiss newspaper Blick.
"Hamilton and Mercedes could also have filed a lawsuit against the FIA after the not-very-clean finale in Abu Dhabi in 2021," Ecclestone added.