Hamilton soon only a six-time world champion?

Felipe Massa will examine legal options that would allow him to regain the 2008 world championship title, which was otherwise won by Lewis Hamilton.

Hamilton was locked in a title fight with Felipe Massa in the 2008 season, and the Brazilian was left empty-handed by one point at the end of the season, while Hamilton, then in a McLaren, became the F1 world champion for the first time.

Massa will be looking to change the outcome of the championship based on the Singapore Grand Prix, where Hamilton finished third and won six points under the current scoring system, while the Ferrari driver, leading until the pit stop, was left with a final thirteenth place after a refueling incident no points.

Singapore 2008 was marked by the Crashgate affair, instigated by Fernando Alonso and his manager and then Renault team boss Flavio Briatore, who ordered Nelson Piquet Jr to deliberately crash into the wall on a given lap, after Alonso had stopped very early, causing a stoppage that allowed the Spaniard to win in an otherwise uncompetitive race car.

The former boss of Formula One, Bernie Ecclestone, recently spoke about this race and the outcome of the 2008 season, who said that the results of this race should be removed from the championship due to manipulations, and that he does not consider Hamilton to be a true seven-time world champion.

Even then, Massa asked the FIA ​​to cancel the results of the race, but his wishes were not heard, as the affair was leaked to the public only a year later, when Renault fired Piquet, by which time it was already too late to change the results according to the rules .

The Brazilian would now, also based on Eccleston's words in an interview with F1-Insider, in which he admitted that they were aware of the violations of the rules even before the end of the 2008 season, when the FIA ​​could still have acted, seek justice in court.

"We had enough information to investigate the matter, but according to the rules, due to the circumstances of the race, the results should have been annulled," Ecclestone said. "It would mean that the race never took place from a championship point of view and Felipe Massa would be the champion, not Lewis Hamilton."

"There is a rule that says that it is not possible to change the championship once a driver has received the trophy, even if it has been proven that it has been stolen," says Massa. "Ferrari's lawyers explained this to me at the time. They went to other people and they all said there was nothing they could do, so I believed them. But after 15 years, we hear that the owner of the commercial rights and the president of the FIA ​​have shared about this as far back as 2008 and have not taken any action so as not to tarnish the name of this sport.

It's very unfortunate because they would have had to overturn the results of that race and I would have been the champion in the end. With that result, I lost the most, so we have to look at all options."

Brazil's chances of succeeding are probably microscopic, but that won't deter him, and in seeking justice, he says he's not motivated by monetary compensation, but by justice. "I was punished for something that was not my fault. The race was stolen, so justice must be served. It would be fair to annul the results of this race.”

The former Ferrari driver added that retroactive wrongdoing is not unusual in the sport. "We saw what happened to the cyclist Lance Armstrong, who was proven doping and stripped of all his titles. What's the difference?