Ecclestone declares: 'Hamilton should never have won that season'

Bernie Ecclestone thinks one of Lewis Hamilton' s world titles is illegitimate. In an interview with F1-Insider.com Ecclestone looks back at the 2008 season, the mistakes made that year, and how he would do things differently now to make Felipe Massa world champion instead of Hamilton.

In 2008, Hamilton captured his first world title, becoming Formula 1's youngest world champion at the time. However, the season was full of controversy, with the biggest spectacle being the so-called 'crashgate'. Renault instructed Nelson Piquet Jr. to deliberately crash at the Singapore Grand Prix, allowing his teammate Fernando Alonso to gain an advantage and eventually win the race.

The case only came to light a year later after Piquet left the team. The FIA launched an investigation and ruled that Renault had set up the plan beforehand. The team received a two-season conditional suspension and team boss Flavio Briatore received a lifetime suspension, although this was overturned by a judge in 2010. However, the whole investigation did not change the outcome of 2008, and so Hamilton remained the winner of that season.

'We wanted to protect the sport'

According to Ecclestone, in hindsight, this should not have happened. Ecclestone - who was the boss of Formula 1 at the time - explained that he and then-FIA president Max Mosley had been informed of the situation before, but decided not to do anything about it. " We wanted to protect the sport and save it from a huge scandal," Ecclestone explains. "At the time, the rule was that a World Cup ranking was untouchable after the FIA awards ceremony at the end of the year. So Hamilton was offered the trophy and everything was fine."

If Renault's results did get scrapped, Felipe Massa would have scored more points than Hamilton and won the championship. " I still feel sorry for Massa today ," said Ecclestone. "He won the final in his home race in Sao Paulo and did everything right. He was robbed of the title he deserved while Hamilton had all the luck in the world and won his first championship. Today I would have settled it differently. That is why, for me, Michael Schumacher is still the sole record holder. Even if the statistics say otherwise."