Massa looks to strip Hamilton of 2008 F1 title, but Kubica was best that year — MPH

Felipe Massa’s recent revelation that he is seeking advice about trying to redress the outcome of the 2008 World Championship is very interesting. He was certainly robbed of that award by the Renault team’s subverting of the Singapore race. But was he the best driver that year?

I know: it’s irrelevant if he was or wasn’t. The world championship is a contest conceived with a set of rules and if those rules are not respected and that changes the outcome, it’s not relevant whether that results in the better driver winning or losing. It doesn’t matter which contestant drove better, which had worse luck, which flattered their car more, which made fewer errors. The contest is just an arithmetical construct to popularise the sport. It doesn’t define who the best driver is. Logically, regardless of who wins, the outcome is invalidated if it’s changed by your pre-defined regulations not being met. But the history books have recorded it anyway. So, Massa may have a case. As may Lewis Hamilton regarding Abu Dhabi ’21, but let’s not get into that again.

Putting all that aside, neither Massa nor Hamilton delivered flawlessly in that 2008 season. Both campaigns were a mix of superlative and messy. Hamilton’s Silverstone victory was one of the all-time great wet weather performances, where he reduced the field to bit players in a way reminiscent of Ayrton Senna at Donington ’93. But he also infamously drove into the back of Kimi Raikkonen’s stationary car in the Canada pitlane. He was magnificent in tricky conditions for much of Monaco but won partly because his lap six contact with the Tabac barriers fortuitously made for the perfect pitstop timings to get him onto dry tyres at the right moment. He should not have been penalised 25sec for his pass on Räikkönen to win at Spa on the road, but he was only behind him because he went off on the second lap. There was the first corner collision at Fuji which lost him any chance of victory there.

Similarly, Felipe Massa was on some days untouchable – and Singapore was one of those days until the foul play-induced pit stops saw his team mess up. But on other days Massa could be like a bull in a china shop, especially if it was raining. The Ferrari was not good in the wet as it ran its tyres too cold, but even so – five spins at Silverstone on the way to a twice-lapped 13th! He was fabulous in audaciously taking the lead from Hamilton at the start of the Hungarian Grand Prix and was cruelly robbed there only by a late engine failure. He dominated Bahrain, but the week before had spun out of second in Malaysia. He was always superb in Istanbul and won there handsomely for the third successive year, but had two clumsy incidents with other cars at Fuji.

You get the picture. Neither title contenders had vintage seasons. Their best stuff was great but as title campaigns go they were each relying on the regular errors of the other to remain in contention. So regardless of the merit of the argument about Singapore being annulled in retrospect, neither Massa nor Hamilton was actually the number 1 performer that year. So, who was? I give you Robert Kubica.