For a few euphoric seconds last November, Ferrari's Felipe Massa had the Formula One championship tantalisingly within his grasp before it was cruelly snatched away.
The Brazilian won plenty of respect and sympathy for the heartbreak and the way he handled it but this season he wants to win the bigger prize.
The 27-year-old starts the new campaign in Australia next week as many people's sentimental favourite to take the final step and become his country's first Formula One world champion since the late Ayrton Senna in 1991.
Massa won more races than McLaren's Lewis Hamilton in 2008 but missed out by a single point after a cliffhanger final race in Brazil that saw the Briton gain the place he needed on the last corner of the last lap.
Shedding tears of frustration after taking a commanding victory in the race but still ending up a loser, Massa showed true sportsmanship on a day that will be forever seared into his memory.
"We need to congratulate Lewis because he did a great championship and he scored more points than us, so he deserves to be champion," Massa said. "I know how to lose and I know how to win."
Then he went out and drowned his sorrows.
There was a feeling then that Hamilton, Formula One's youngest ever champion, deserved the crown because he had missed out by the same margin to Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen in 2007.
If that is the case, then Massa is due his reward in 2009.
"I hoped that Felipe would do something last year so let's hope he does it this year," Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone said in January.
MISSED CHANCES
Massa won six races to Hamilton's five, although the tally would have been reversed had the McLaren driver not been stripped of his Belgian Grand Prix victory for an illegal overtaking manoeuvre.
The Brazilian was denied victory by the cruellest of blows in Hungary and Singapore, the first an engine failure while leading comfortably three laps from the end and the second a bungled pitstop by his crew while he had been out in front from pole position.
Massa started last season under pressure, with team mate Kimi Raikkonen having just seized the title and poised to stamp his authority on the Maranello team.
That did not happen, with Massa determined to show the Finn that there really were two drivers of equal status in the garage.
By the time they got to Interlagos, Massa and Hamilton were in a two-man duel and many of their rivals were -- not so silently, in the case of Hamilton's former team mate Fernando Alonso -- hoping that the Ferrari man would win.
Always close to Schumacher, with the retired German in regular contact, Massa is part of the Ferrari family -- managed by former boss Jean Todt's son Nicolas and admired by Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo.
"Hamilton is a great driver, capable of coming close to the world title in his first year in Formula One and winning it in the second," said Montezemolo last December. "But with all respect, I wouldn't swap him for Felipe Massa."
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