Sports Thoughts: Crashgate Massa's case gets an amber light

Issues like “unlawful means conspiracy” and “deliberate concealment” are more typically found in civil or commercial fraud matters rather than in sporting disputes. However, the judgment handed down by the High Court (Mr Justice Jay) on 20 November 2025 in Felipe Massa's well publicised “Crashgate” claim against Formula One Management Limited (FOM), Bernie Ecclestone and the FIA, contains a detailed analysis of both, as well as complex issues of contractual interpretation and jurisdiction.¹

Massa alleges that he was unfairly denied the 2008 F1 World Drivers' Championship after Nelson Piquet Jr intentionally crashed in Singapore, bringing out a safety car to benefit his teammate Fernando Alonso. He relies on an interview given by Ecclestone in early 2023 indicating that Ecclestone and Max Mosley (then FIA president) were made aware of the deliberate nature of the crash shortly afterwards but chose to keep it quiet to protect F1 from scandal.

Massa claims for breach of contract, tortious breach of duty, conspiracy, and inducement of breach of contract against some or all of the Defendants. Massa's breach of contract and tortious breach of duty claims are governed by French law; his conspiracy and inducement claims are subject to English law. He seeks damages of approximately GBP64 million and declarations that the FIA breached its regulations by not investigating the crash promptly in 2008, which had it done so, would have meant altering the Singapore race results thus making Massa 2008 World Champion.

The Defendants applied for summary disposal of the claims, requiring them to show that Massa's claims have no real prospect of success, always a difficult task at such an early stage of the case.

Massa's claims are complex, and so is the judgment. Press statements issued by Massa and the FIA each respectively present the outcome as a success. The best synopsis is the Court's own press summary.

In summary:

• Massa's claim against the FIA for breach of contract (in this case the “super licence” issued by the FIA to all F1 drivers, which incorporates provisions of the FIA Sporting Code) fails. Although the provisions of the FIA Sporting Code arguably gave the FIA a duty to investigate in the circumstances, which it did not do, that duty would not have been owed to Massa personally, but to the FIA's members (e.g. the various national motor sport governing bodies). In any event, the claim is out of time, because Massa should have known that the FIA had not investigated as early as late 2008.
• Massa's related claim against the FIA for breach of duty survives, because that duty could arguably be owed to Massa. However, the Judge expressed serious doubts about the claim and directed Massa to obtain further French law advice before deciding whether to pursue it. In any event, the claim is out of time for the same reasons as above, so it could only be relied on as part of the unlawful means conspiracy (see below) not as a standalone claim.
• Massa's claim against all the Defendants for unlawful means conspiracy can continue to trial. Indeed, the Judge's view was that this was really the key claim, with the other claims set out in what he described as a “Byzantine pleading which requires much effort to unpack”, being largely unnecessary [79]. This claim is not time barred because some of the information required to infer a conspiracy may not have been present until Ecclestone's 2023 interview.
• Massa's claim against FOM and Ecclestone for inducing breach of contract (i.e. inducing the FIA to breach its contractual duty to investigate) may also continue to trial for similar reasons.

There are two interesting takeaways from the judgment:

• First, the Court rejected Massa's claims for declaratory relief. The Judge held that the declarations would have no “practical utility” and would be “too close” to “impinging on the right of the FIA to govern its own affairs” [215]. The Court declined to interfere in the FIA's affairs, particularly when third parties (such as 2008 World Champion, Lewis Hamilton) had not been heard. This underlines the reluctance of English courts to interfere in a sports organisation's affairs; and
• Further, the Judge highlighted the obstacles Massa's case will face at trial on causation, which “would not necessarily be plain sailing” [150]. Did Nelson Picquet's crash really cause Massa to get no points in Singapore, or was it errors made during Massa's subsequent pitstop during the race? Was the result in Singapore really the reason Massa missed out on the title by one point, or was it Hamilton's dramatic overtake on the final corner of the final race in Sao Paolo to secure 5th place? Even if the WMSC (the FIA committee who considered the issue at the time) had known all the facts, would it really have made a decision that involved stripping Hamilton of his title and awarding it retrospectively to Massa? Questions like these neatly illustrate the inherent difficulty with legal arguments around causation in the sporting context, where results on the track, pitch, court or field are inevitably impacted by a myriad of factors. This uncertainty is, after all, why we love sport.

¹Felipe Massa v (1) Formula One Management Limited (2) Bernard Charles Ecclestone (3) Fédération Internationale de L’Automobile [2025] EWHC 3064 (KB)