Although Lewis Hamilton no longer chooses to participate in F1’s Secret Santa event, he did do so back in 2017. It was then that he sarcastically handed over a retirement kit to Felipe Massa for Christmas.
As revealed in a video by Formula One on YouTube recently, Massa received a gift that consisted of a pair of black shoes for an old man. Following this, he received a book for pensioners. Lastly, he also received a smoking pipe.
Hamilton gave Massa this gift since the former Ferrari driver had already announced that he would be retiring after the 2017 campaign. That year Hamilton won his fourth championship while driving for Mercedes. On the other hand, Massa was trying to help Williams to score as many points as he could.
While the two found themselves fighting their own battles in 2017, they did have a tense battle for the title back in 2008. On that occasion, Hamilton pipped Massa to claim his first-ever F1 championship in arguably the most controversial of circumstances.
How has the 2008 F1 title turned into a controversy now?
The controversy surrounding the 2008 title began once again after former F1 CEO Bernie Ecclestone revealed to the media that the management knew about the infamous Crashgate scandal of that year. On hearing these remarks, an enraged Felipe Massa decided to file a lawsuit to claim the 2008 title as the ‘rightful’ owner.
Massa believes that the Crashgate scandal resulted in him losing the title to Hamilton. Renault had orchestrated this scandal by purposely instructing Nelson Piquet Jr to crash to help his teammate Fernando Alonso win that year’s Singapore Grand Prix.
Therefore, Massa in his lawsuit wants what he believes is ‘his’. If not the title, the former Brazilian driver wants $13 million as compensation.
However, it is unlikely for Massa to receive anything positive from this lawsuit even though he and his lawyers are trying their level best to extract some sort of compensation for this. Moreover, even Lewis Hamilton has shown a lack of interest in this lawsuit whenever the media has asked him about it.
