Felipe Massa’s 2008 world title near miss, by the man who knew him best

Rob Smedley spent two decades in Formula One, with a memorable 10 years at Ferrari.

For much of that time, he was the calming voice in Felipe Massa’s ear as his race engineer. There is no question, though, about the nine months that most defines his time in F1.

At the Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos on Nov 2, 2008, Massa lost the world drivers’ championship by a single point.

Lewis Hamilton’s title-winning overtake on Timo Glock came on the last lap of the final race of the year and just 20 seconds after Massa had crossed the line victorious in his home race.

For a brief moment, Massa’s family believed he was world champion before a cruel reality dawned. Hamilton went on to win another six titles, but this was Massa’s last grand prix victory.

Nine months on from that heartbreak came a life-threatening incident at the Hungaroring when Massa ran over a spring from Rubens Barrichello’s Brawn during qualifying.

It flicked towards the Ferrari cockpit and pierced Massa’s helmet, knocking him unconscious, causing a gruesome head injury. He was airlifted to intensive care and did not race again until the start of the following season.

Smedley’s time at Ferrari began near the end of the team’s golden era, where Michael Schumacher was backed by the likes of technical director Ross Brawn, team principal Jean Todt and designer Rory Byrne, winning five double titles between 2000 and 2004.

Smedley can still recall a moment of panic after signing his contract at Brawn’s house in 2003. “I suddenly said, ‘Ross, I don’t speak Italian, so I think it’s going to be a problem’. He said, ‘You don’t need to worry about it because everybody speaks English’.

“What I found within hours of starting to work there was that everybody spoke English to Ross, because he worked there as technical director up in the stratosphere. But to me as a lowly race engineer, nobody spoke English.

“I had to learn the language. I kind of ditched lessons and learned all my Italian from the mechanics. So now apparently when I speak Italian I have a very Modenese accent.”

‘Massa would have beaten Hamilton if Ferrari still had Ross Brawn’

After moving from the test to the race team, Smedley was promoted to become Massa’s race engineer mid-way through 2006 – the Brazilian’s first season at the Scuderia and Schumacher’s last.

Through eight seasons together at Ferrari, they developed a strong relationship that helped Massa to 11 race wins, but a drivers’ championship was never to be.

This weekend marks 16 years since Massa’s bittersweet celebration on the Interlagos podium and Smedley is frank in his assessment of what went wrong that season.

“We should have won that world championship. A very firm reason that we didn’t was because Ross wasn’t there any more,” Smedley tells Telegraph Sport.

“Ross was such a strong hand on the tiller in always making the sensible decisions, always looking at the long game, always looking at everything from a world championship point of view, rather than what we can do on that day and that weekend.

“If Ross was there we probably would have been pushing as hard, but probably would have made fewer mistakes that we made as a team throughout the year,” Smedley says.

Schumacher’s departure left a gaping chasm at Ferrari

Indeed, when it comes to missteps, Massa’s Ferrari leaving the Singapore pit lane with the fuel hose still attached was as defining an image of the season as those emotional scenes in Sao Paulo.

Brawn’s departure at the end of 2006 came at the same time as Schumacher’s, meaning Ferrari lost two of the cornerstones of their domination in short order.

Schumacher’s absence also left a hole that was begging to be filled, with Ferrari striving to rekindle their success after Fernando Alonso and Renault cleaned up in 2005 and 2006.

“How do you replace Michael in the car? It probably changed [the situation] a little bit for us because Felipe was very much in the shadow of Michael whilst Michael was driving.

“Michael had all the medals, the championships and had absolutely nothing to prove,” Smedley says. “His work ethic was unquestioned, his level of detail was absolutely beyond compare. His precision, his intellect – the fact that he was always at 100 per cent.”

Kimi Raikkonen won the drivers’ title in his first year at Ferrari, as McLaren imploded through the dual crises of spygate and Fernando Alonso’s wrecking-ball approach to team harmony. In 2008 Massa, though, was the main challenger to a McLaren where the emergent Hamilton was the clear No 1.

Smedley looks back with pride on that season and the fact that Massa was able to reach that level at Ferrari despite a “rocky” start at the team. Ferrari too, won the constructors’ championship – their most recent F1 title of any kind.

“Of what Felipe and the team did, I am very proud. I am proud I played a small part in that. When I took on the role of being Felipe’s race engineer, the senior management of the team were unsure whether they would sign a contract with him to extend for another year in 2007.

“By the end of the year they were resolute that this was somebody who was going to have a good future at Ferrari and they signed a two-year contract with him. Two years later we’re one point away from winning the world championship.”

‘If that spring was 5mm to the right, he wouldn’t still be here’

The pain of losing that championship in such a cruel way is one thing, but Massa’s accident at the Hungaroring the following season made Smedley question whether he wanted to carry on in motorsport at all.

“Felipe is still with us today because the gods, or whatever you believe in, looked down and decided that it wasn’t his day,” Smedley says. “If that spring was 5mm more to the right-hand side he wouldn’t have been – that to me was a real wake-up call.”

Five years later Ferrari academy driver Jules Bianchi had an ultimately fatal crash at the Japanese Grand Prix after his Marussia slid backwards into a recovery vehicle in treacherous conditions. He spent nine months in a coma but died in 2015.

“By 2014 Jules was a really good friend of mine so to lose him in a race car was very, very hard to come to terms with, but also, I kind of reconciled myself to the dangers of it because of 2009.

“I made a conscious decision to continue because in 2009 after Hungary I absolutely questioned whether or not I wanted to carry on. It was a really, really dark moment for me.”

Smedley left Ferrari in 2013, moving with Massa to Williams before leading F1’s technical and data side of operations for two seasons.

His current project is the Global Karting League, which is aimed at identifying and developing talent at the grass roots, as well as widening participation in an increasingly expensive and inaccessible sport.

Despite an impressive CV, Smedley says he never felt like he truly ‘made it’. “Every single day of my life I think I’ve got something to prove – there’s always the imposter syndrome going on,” he says.

“I think you’ve always got to prove yourself in this environment and that is something I personally relish and enjoy.

“Definitely, when I went with Ferrari… I worked at Stewart and then I had a good run at Jordan. That was a great environment for me with Eddie Jordan promoting young guys into more senior positions and seeing if they sank or swam. Hopefully, I did alright.

“F1 as a sport is brutal in that way; nobody cares about what you did yesterday, people only care about what you’re doing today and tomorrow.”