In recent weeks there have been speculations that Felipe Massa wants millions of euros in compensation for missing out on the world title in 2008. Criticism followed that Felipe Massa is only entering into his legal battle for financial gain, but the Brazilian wants nothing to do with that.
“It’s pretty clear that we’re not going to end this until we get a result that’s correct for the sport,” Felipe Massa told Brazil’s version of ‘Motorsport.com’. “That is why we decided to put together a very large and important legal team. I’m doing this for the sport, I’m doing this to show that manipulation should not be part of our sport.”
“I’m not doing this for the money. I am doing this for fairness in sport.”
“So whatever people write about money is completely wrong!”
“Compensation definitely exists. For example, I now spend a lot of money on this case, but I really don’t do this for the money.”
The big question is to what extent there are possibilities to reverse the award of the world title 15 years after the date. There is nothing about this in the regulations and there is also a lot of uncertainty about who is legally competent. However, Felipe Massa believes it is possible.
“I am definitely very optimistic,” said Massa. “It’s pretty clear what happened in Singapore in 2008 during the race. The race should have been canceled and it didn’t. In the end, no one was penalized, everything that happened was completely unacceptable.”
“It is important that everyone knows exactly what happened during that race. It’s important that people understand that the driver’s championship result that year was manipulated by that race.”