What is emailgate I've looked everywhere and can't find a concrete answer.
oh god. ok anon, buckle in, let's go 😭
so feb 1, 2024, it's leaked that lewis goes to ferrari, right. everyone expects that this will have some influence on how lewis's last year at merc goes, he'll probably be left out of important discussions etc etc, the usual that happens when a driver leaves a team.
NOPE! it goes a bit beyond that. right off the bat the car seems like utter trash, and what's worse, it looks like lewis has suddenly forgotten how to qualify? george outqualifies him in p much every single quali session, lewis seems very resigned to this, and even goes so far as to say he doesn't expect to outqualify george all season.
there's a couple other incidents, like lewis's tires having some kind of issue with tire blankets or something during a quali? so they were cold when they went on the car and he couldn't warm them up. this obviously impacted his quali.
then, june 10th, an email gets sent to every single person in the paddock to whom horner's texts had also been leaked. this implies that the person who leaked it is an insider or somewhat connected to the sport (although it's said they could've gotten the emails elsewhere too). a bunch of journalists also got the email and even got whatsapp messages with the same text.
you can read about that here.
now obviously the email has some very serious accusations. it accuses merc of essentially trying to sabotage lewis and maybe kill him, and that it's something that everyone within knows is happening. the reason given is that "toto is like a scorned wife" and that he favors george.
merc kind of ... overreact. as in they call the fucking cops.
they also say they'll do an internal investigation. the cops say no crime has been committed. idk what their investigation turned up.
the contents of the email make it seem like it was written by someone within the team. however, the team insists it was written by a deranged fan. the thing is, though, calling the cops is a massive overreaction if it's just a fan, because ignoring it would've been a far better course of action. however, if you're suspecting a leak inside the team... calling the cops makes sense.
another thing is that i doubt a fan would be able to get all those exact email addresses and numbers that were contacted with this email. this was the same address list that received the horner texts leak. whoever sent this email is unlikely to be "just a fan."
funnily enough though, the next race is spain, and lewis is on the podium. somehow apparently he suddenly knows how to drive?
things are ok for the next few races. he even wins at silversone, and then at spa (through russell's dsq). and then they head into summer break.
once summer break ends, it's back to business, to bullshit setups and shit qualis and strategy calls for lewis that do not make sense at all. and that goes on till the end of the season, though vegas and abu dhabi went pretty well. my guess is that they didn't want his farewell to stink especially after they released their cute narcissistic little "every dream needs a team" video.
a lot of people, even people on here, thought the email was sent by a fan too, and that there was noooo way merc could ever sabotage lewis. my personal opinion is that it's embarrassing to glaze a corporation that hard lmao you can't rule out sabotage in the lies and sabotage sport. there are plenty of good reasons merc would try to make lewis look worse than george (want to make george look better to sponsors, aren't happy with how the lewis-to-ferrari news was leaked, toto's just mad he can't force lewis out of the sport anymore and his legacy will now be tied to ferrari instead of merc, toto wants to look like he's getting rid of a bad driver and not that he fumbled the GOAT etc etc) and not many good reasons for why it's not sabotage ("why would they!!!" is not a reason).
then there's the other things that don't add up — lewis asking for info on the radio and not getting it from bono, the strategies that don't make sense, the fact that there are claims that george's car would be untouched after fp3 but there would be constant tinkering with lewis's even if it had been fine. which could mean nothing!! i mean, toto said himself that they'd been running experiments on lewis's car so it tracks with that. but lewis's demeanor the entire year was not a happy one and it was obvious he did not feel supported by his team. and that seemed to go just beyond leaving the team and having a bad car in his last year with them. keep in mind that merc were a comfortable 4th in constructors'; they weren't going to beat anyone nor was anyone going to catch up to them. they could afford to lose points here and there by simply not giving lewis optimal setups or making him experiment. so the argument that "they wouldn't sacrifice the points" doesn't hold much weight either imo.
so. make of all this what you will tbh. my own opinion lies somewhere in between; that there's a good chance it was sabotage, that you can't rule it out, and that dickriding a corporation just because you don't like a driver or his fans or think yourself smarter than everyone is just embarrassing.
edit: adding this comment serena williams made under lewis's post, for reasons...
