Felipe Massa reveals why he’s trying to have Lewis Hamilton stripped of F1 title as he insists ‘it’s not about money’

FELIPE MASSA claims his attempts to overturn Lewis Hamilton's 2008 F1 title are about justice and "not money".

The Brazilian has started a legal challenge based on claims that former supremo Bernie Ecclestone knew details about the "crashgate" scandal.

Crashgate occurred at the 2008 Singapore GP where Renault's Nelson Piquet Jr intentionally crashed to assist his team-mate Fernando Alonso in the race.

The knock-on result was Ferrari stuffed up Massa's pitstop and ultimately cost him points in the race, which would have been crucial come the end of the season as Hamilton won the title by a point.

Massa is now seeking his options to have the decision overturned, based on Ecclestone's failure to act on the information at the time.

He said: "The first thing when Bernie's comment [came out] I was really, really surprised, for those comments.

"Because everybody knows what happened in the race, everything came out in 2009.

"We hear after that also that Charlie [Whiting] knew and Max [Mosley] [both from the FIA], so for me it's the injustice for the sport.

"It shows that maybe every decision on the legal side, everything that happens, it was not correct in that situation.

"So I took the decision to study the legal side of everything that happened. I'm not doing this for money but I'm doing this for justice.

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"Not only for me, but for my friends, my country, my family, Ferrari and Ferrari fans, so in the end there are so many things.

"You know what a championship does for a country? You can develop the country, we don't have Brazilian drivers now racing as well, so there are so many things.

"This is racing, everything that went wrong is part of the game. When you have a problem in the engine or when you have a mistake.

"You cannot really say 'I was wrong because my engine broke down'. No. But what happened in that race is a different situation."