Lewis Hamilton won his first championship all the way back in 2008 with McLaren. He defeated Ferrari’s Felipe Massa to win the title by making a crucial last-lap pass on Timo Glock. Since Hamilton passed a slow-moving Glock on the last lap of the Brazilian Grand Prix, many initially presumed that the German perhaps deliberately let the Briton past him. As a result, Glock received several death threats. The former Jordan driver has now provided the details of the same.
When David Coulthard asked Glock about the same on the Formula for Success podcast, the German replied, “In the first couple of weeks and months after the race, I was scared to actually go out of the house and then thinking about going to Brazil for the F1 race. I was like no, I’m going to skip that race. I’m not going there”.
The 42-year-old has now revealed that he was traumatized back then after the kind of abuse he and his family received despite not being at fault for what transpired. Glock also revealed that people were so scared that he might get attacked that police ended up escorting him to the airport and to his plane.
Things only calmed down for him after F1 released the on-board footage that showed he was helpless in his fight against Lewis Hamilton. Although Glock has been presumed innocent, Hamilton’s championship win is still controversial because of another incident.
Felipe Massa is still desperate to regain the 2008 title from Lewis Hamilton
The 2008 season also featured the infamous Crashgate scandal. Renault had ordered Nelson Piquet Jr. to deliberately crash to help his teammate Fernando Alonso win the 2008 Singapore GP.
This incident proved disastrous for Felipe Massa, who lost the lead of the race and finished outside the points. With former F1 CEO Bernie Ecclestone admitting that he and the FIA were aware of this incident, but did not take action to protect the integrity of F1, Massa was left furious.
The Brazilian former driver decided to file a lawsuit against Ecclestone, F1, and the FIA as a result. He was eager to overturn the results of the 2008 Singapore GP that would give him the necessary points to beat Lewis Hamilton to the 2008 championship.
However, due to a technical reason, the FIA cannot overturn the results of the 2008 Singapore GP. Once a championship is handed to a driver at the end of the season during the year-end gala, F1’s rules state that no previous results can be overturned for any reason. As a result, Massa will most likely lose his $125 million lawsuit.
