"I thought if I talked to him, he will kill me"- Timo Glock recalls his thoughts of meeting Felipe Massa after 2008 Brazilian GP crash

Former F1 driver Timo Glock said in a recent interview that he feared approaching Felipe Massa after a dramatic 2008 Brazilian GP.

It was Glock's gamble on wet tyres that led to him getting overtaken by Lewis Hamilton in the last lap of the race. That turned the title fight on its head, as the then McLaren driver (98) beat Massa by a point to win the championship.

As the race was in Brazil, Felipe Massa had tremendous support. Glock did not know that his struggles on the last lap decided the title race. When asked if he tried to reach out to the Brazilian in the aftermath, Glock said that he was too scared of approaching the Ferrari driver at the time. He said:

"I thought if I talked to him, he will kill me. I don’t know."

In his interview on the Beyond the Grid Podcast, Glock described the aftermath of the race and said that he never approached Massa, as he feared the Brazilian. Glock said:

“I came back to the pits, and funnily enough, Lewis stopped in front of me. So I go there, give him a handshake and said ‘well done, man, congratulations on your World Championship’ in front of, I don’t know how many, 1,000 Brazilian spectators?"

Glock then said about how journalists swarmed him as he was weighing himself on the scales. Many of them even accused him of trying to help Hamilton win the title. He said:

“I walked up to the scales, and this whole bunch of journalists and photographers run down and come to me and asked me these questions like ‘was this on purpose; did you help Lewis? Why did you help Lewis? You decided the championship!’ and I was like ‘what the hell…? What’s going on here?’

Glock finished tenth in the championship that season.

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Timo Glock elaborates aftermath of 2008 title decider

Glock elaborated on the kind of disdain anyone wearing a Toyota shirt - the team he was racing for - faced at the circuit that day.

He also revealed how he had to get a police escort from the track to the hotel. He said:

“My physiotherapist comes to me and takes me, runs me back to hospitality, locks me in the room and tells me what happened. So then I understood what’s going on. I still remember my mechanics … people were throwing stuff down on everyone who had a Toyota shirt on. I got a police escort from the track to the hotel. From the hotel the next morning to the plane to the airport, into the plane. They walked with me onto the plane."

Glock did, however, reveal that any such animosity between him and Massa ended when the two drivers met last year for a Sky Sports feature.