After Ignoring Felipe Massa’s $13,000,000 Claim Against Lewis Hamilton, FIA Bans Ferrari Legend From Beloved Italian GP

To live a happy and healthy life, a lot of people ‘let bygones be bygones’. But Felipe Massa is not one of them. He is still hung up on his 2008 World Championship loss to Lewis Hamilton. To push his cause, he even launched a $13 million lawsuit for legally claiming back what should’ve been rightly his. The FIA has not only ignored his claim but also banned the ex-Ferrari racer from coming anywhere near the Italian GP premises.

Massa, to this date, believes that the ‘Crashgate’ scandal at the 2008 Singapore GP was the primary cause behind his inevitable WDC win that year. Because of the incident, Hamilton, for no direct involvement of his own, fortunately, gained more points and eventually won the championship. With the newfound information that Massa got about the ex-CEO of F1 ignoring the scandal, he took the legal route to solve his issues.

That has landed him in hot water. Hot would actually be a miniature version of how the water is. Boiling? That’s better. Massa, who drove for Ferrari back then, has now been disallowed from entering the Monza circuit. And it’s all courtesy of his controversial lawsuit. But this is not where the story stops.

On the main straight at the ‘Temple of Speed’, some fans had put up a big poster beyond the racing barriers. It read: “Felipe Massa world champion 2008”. So much for something that happened over 15 years ago! The FIA was having none of this balderdash. The governing body sternly instructed for the poster to be taken down.

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As time passes and Massa’s case gets nowhere, he is slowly losing the respect he had in the eyes of many fans and stakeholders in the F1 world. On the other side of this, Hamilton is living his professional life based on trust and respect.

Lewis Hamilton entrusts Mercedes with the overnight development job for a quick Qualifying at the Italian GP

It wasn’t the best of Fridays for Lewis Hamilton at Monza. He could only manage a P8 in FP1 and a humbling P17 in FP2. However, the tests that they had planned to run were successfully executed. Coming into Saturday, Mercedes had a task on their hands to modify the car according to the insights received. As per the 7x champ, the team will have done what they intended to.

Hamilton said, “The reliability was strong, and we got through the work that we needed to, checking off the different tests we had to do. There’s lots of learning from today, and we will have a bit of work tonight to try and improve for Saturday – as we always manage to do. I know that the team will do great work overnight to improve the set-up and car balance so that we can be quicker tomorrow.”

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With Ferrari looking quick and back in the mix for podium contention, will the Silver Arrows be up for the challenge?