2008 Formula One World Championship
The championship was contested over eighteen races commencing in Australia on 16 March and ending in Brazil on 2 November.
[2] Eleven teams competed in the championship, although Super Aguri withdrew on 6 May from the 2008 Formula One season due to financial troubles, completing four races.
New technical rules for 2008 included the banning of traction control after it was re-introduced in 2001, at the Spanish Grand Prix.
[citation needed] However, despite the Prodrive application being accepted, Richards later announced that the team would not race in 2008 due to a dispute over the legality of customer cars.
[37] 2005 and 2006 World Champion Fernando Alonso left McLaren after a single season to rejoin Renault.
After an unsuccessful test for Force India in December 2007, Ralf Schumacher left Toyota to drive for Mücke Motorsport in the DTM series.
2007 GP2 champion Timo Glock, who had also been the test driver for BMW Sauber, returned to a Formula One race seat in place of Schumacher.
Sébastien Bourdais, who won his fourth consecutive Champ Car title in 2007, joined Toro Rosso in 2008, replacing Vitantonio Liuzzi, who moved to Force India as their test driver.
Despite an engine problem, Toro Rosso debutant Sébastien Bourdais completed over 90% of the race distance, earning him points in seventh.
A grid penalty for impeding drivers and a pit stop mishap left Hamilton in fifth place at Malaysia, while Räikkönen took his 16th career victory after he qualified in second position.
Massa took pole and won for the third successive Istanbul race, Hamilton splitting the Ferraris on the podium.
Räikkönen started the French Grand Prix on pole, but exhaust problems allowed teammate Massa to get the better of him, and he took his third season victory.
The new Valencia Street Circuit was the new host of the European Grand Prix, Massa taking pole and winning with Hamilton second.
At Belgium, Hamilton qualified on pole and finished in first, though he received a 25-second penalty for gaining an advantage during a scrap with Räikkönen.
Toro Rosso driver Sebastian Vettel became the youngest ever pole man and victor after a stunning weekend at Monza.
He was victorious from a fuel feed problem in Q2 leaving him 15th on the grid, though he still out-qualified Piquet Jr. Rosberg finished on the podium for the second and last time in 2008.
Hamilton eventually regained fifth place, however, by passing Glock, who was struggling on dry tyres, and finished fifth to take the title by one point from Massa.
In a scandal that became known as "Crashgate" in the media, during the 2009 season around the time of the Belgium Grand Prix, allegations by former Renault driver Nelson Piquet Jr. about his crash in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix led to charges of race-fixing against Renault and the departure of team boss Flavio Briatore and engineering director Pat Symonds.
In March 2023, in an interview with German website F1-Insider, former Formula One Group chief executive Bernie Ecclestone was quoted saying that both he and then-FIA president Max Mosley were made aware of Renault's deliberate manipulation of the Singapore Grand Prix "during the 2008 season".
Despite this, Ecclestone said they decided not to act before the championship results were finalised at the end-of-year FIA Prize Giving Ceremony in order to "protect the sport and save it from a huge scandal".
Following Ecclestone's comments, Massa reportedly started investigating whether he could take legal action to challenge the outcome of the 2008 championship.
"[75] In March 2024, Massa filed a lawsuit against Formula One, the FIA and Bernie Ecclestone in the London High Court.
He is seeking in excess of $80 million in damages and a declaration from the FIA that he would have won the championship had the governing body not breached its regulations.
