Bernie Ecclestone says he can’t remember saying in an interview that he was already aware in 2008 that Nelson Piquet Jr.’s crash at the Singapore GP was intentional.
The incident is now in the collective memory as ‘Crashgate’. Nelson Piquet Jr. crashed at the 2008 Singapore GP on behalf of his team Renault to trigger a safety car procedure to put his teammate Fernando Alonso in a favorable position to win the race.
That nefarious plan succeeded while Felipe Massa was unable to score any points due to a pit stop gone wrong. At the last race of the year in Brazil, Massa would eventually lose the world title to Lewis Hamilton by just one point. Ecclestone said in an interview that he and then FIA president Max Mosley were aware that the crash was intentional, but that they did nothing about it.
Today, Ecclestone tells Reuters he has no recollection of that particular interview.
Frankly, I don’t remember anything about it, said the former F1 pope. I certainly don’t remember giving that interview.
He added that neither Felipe Massa nor his lawyers approached him to ask what he had just said. This week it was announced that Massa wants to file a lawsuit against F1 and the FIA for the missed world title.