One of Massa's lawsuits was dismissed, the other was upheld.

      Following the preliminary hearings, Mr Justice Robert Jay ruled that Felipe Massa’s lawsuit against the FIA, Formula 1 and Bernie Ecclestone may proceed, but warned the Brazilian that it will not be easy for him to win the case.

      At this stage the question was only whether a full trial would follow the preliminary hearings in the Royal Court of Justice in London or whether the case would be discontinued. The decision was mixed.

      The judge accepted that Massa had a real prospect of persuading the court that the FIA "was under a duty to carry out an investigation", but that this was the duty of "members of the FIA", not "Mr Massa personally". Accordingly, that claim by Massa against the FIA is dismissed. Another claim against the FIA, brought under French law, is "barely afloat", the judge urged Massa to "conduct further consultations or else abandon that claim immediately."

      The allegations against Ecclestone of criminal conspiracy have legal prospects, since they do not require Massa to have an immediately actionable contractual right. The judge rejected the parties’ lawyers’ arguments about the statute of limitations, because the legally allowable six-year period is to be calculated not from the date of the crash, but from Ecclestone’s March 2023 interview, when all the details became known.

      "Mr Massa has a real prospect of proving in court that until Mr Ecclestone’s 2023 interview he did not have the necessary facts to bring a claim.

      Although a reasonable person in Mr Massa’s position would have known of the factual absence of an investigation after the publication of the World Council’s decision in September 2009, an inference of a conspiracy to conceal the truth on the part of Mr Ecclestone and Mr Mosley is far from obvious, not least because the council’s report did not accord with such a conspiracy.

      Moreover, Mr Massa did not have, or had insufficient, information to exercise reasonable diligence under section 32 of the Limitation Act. The interview enabled him to 'connect the dots'.

      Any future litigation will not be an 'easy ride'. Mr Massa will have to overcome various causation issues.

      If successful, Mr Massa could obtain compensation for lost career opportunities, but cannot ask the court to rewrite the results of the 2008 World Championship," Mr Justice Jay said in his ruling.