Nelson Piquet Jr has defended himself amid the growing debate over whether Lewis Hamilton should be stripped of his first world title.
The former F1 driver has spoken up after it was reported that Felipe Massa is looking into legal options over the outcome of the 2008 Drivers’ title that he narrowly missed out on.
Massa’s consideration of legal option comes after former F1 boss Bernie Eccleston admitted that he and then-FIA president Max Moseley knew Piquet deliberately crashed his car in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix to manipulate the race result.
“It was a team order to help someone within our team,” Piquet told the Pelas Pistas podcast.
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“It wasn’t to harm Felipe Massa. It was nothing like that
“Yes, it was a mistake. But, in the position I was in, dreaming of being in F1 for so many years, Singapore arrived and they put me against the wall psychologically.
“Many people ask me ‘Would you do it again?’ and my normal answer is ‘obviously not’. But at that age, under that pressure.
“I had no one with me in Formula 1 except a bully, and a bully like that, always complaining, always pushing, always warning ‘This is your last chance’.
“I had the feeling that everything was going backwards, because I was supposed to have done more tests, I was another teammate not strong enough for Alonso, like Kovalainen.
“Alonso then wanted to take over the world – he had a knife between his teeth. If Fernando drives like he does today, in 2023, imagine what he was like 15 years ago.
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“So yes, I made a mistake,” he explained, offering up a defence over what’s been dubbed ‘Crashgate’.
Amid the debate over the result of that year’s championship, McLaren has taken to social media to mock claims that the Brazilian driver was robbed of the title.
McLaren has released a video on its TikTok with a montage of photos from Hamilton’s title-winning season and the caption “Denial is a river in Egypt.”