It was at once the highest and the lowest point in Massa’s career as a Formula One driver. For 38 seconds, he felt like the champion, only to be deflated.

“It was an emotional day for me,” he said after the race, with tears in his eyes. “You get here and you’ve almost done everything perfect, but we saw Lewis passing Glock again and then it was mixed emotion. It’s one more day of life when I will learn a lot but for sure I’m very emotional.”

In another way, it was a defining, typical moment for the amiable Brazilian who had entered the series as a great hope in 2002, but had never quite convinced as world champion material until that season, when he won six races and left his teammate, the reigning champion Kimi Raikkonen, looking tired and washed up.

Massa had begun to look like elite auto racing’s equivalent to cycling’s perennial also-ran, Raymond Poulidor, who never won the Tour de France despite finishing in second place three times and in third place five times. On the other hand, although Massa had finished third in the series in 2006 as Michael Schumacher’s teammate, he had not come any closer to the title since.

In fact, the 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix did not end up being the low point in Massa’s career. During qualifying at the Hungarian Grand Prix the next season, he was struck in the head by a flying suspension spring that had fallen off another car. The spring smashed through his helmet and just missed his eye. He was lucky to have survived, and lucky to not have lost his eyesight.