Doubts over Massa's 'title chase': 'No idea where this is going to end'

Felipe Massa is hunting for justice. The Brazilian wants to win the 2008 F1 world title in court, after it emerged that the sport already knew about 'Crashgate'. Rob Smedley, Massa's race engineer, has reservations about the whole situation.

Lewis Hamilton won his first Formula 1 title in 2008. Everyone knows the story. Hamilton won the world title on the last lap of the last race by passing Timo Glock to gain enough points. Massa's family was already celebrating in the garage when Hamilton turned out to be too fast after all.

Yet this case is not about the final race in Brazil, but about the dubious GP in Singapore. Massa did not finish that race in the points, but Hamilton did. However, the race was affected by Nelson Piquet Jr's crash and so Massa believes that race should be dropped from the championship.

Why Massa thinks he deserves the world title

His race engineer from the time and also great friend of Massa, Rob Smedley, prefers not to get involved in the whole thing. ''I've always been a person that, whatever happened yesterday, whether it was good or bad, I get up and dust myself off and move on. I'm interested in what's happening today and tomorrow and the day after that. But that's my personal opinion,'' Smedley told The Race F1 Podcast.

''What I will say is this is something that Felipe feels strongly about. Everybody should have their personal right to pursue whatever they feel is just. That’s the case with Felipe here. There's a lot of different parties involved, we're starting to look back at the past. Where this will end I've got no idea.''

That the race was rigged, Smedley realised very quickly. Thus, he also discusses in the podcast that shortly after the race, people at Ferrari already knew what had happened. The replays spoke for themselves. Piquet had deliberately crashed to help Fernando Alonso to victory. The FIA and F1 would have found out back in 2008 but did not act, Bernie Ecclestone previously revealed.