Toto Wolff: ‘Mad people, see a shrink’ as police investigate Lewis Hamilton email

Following a mass email being sent out regarding Lewis Hamilton, Toto Wolff has confirmed the police are now investigating the matter.

On the Monday following the Canadian Grand Prix, a mass email was sent out to hundreds of members of the F1 community in which allegations regarding Mercedes’ treatment of Lewis Hamilton were made.

Toto Wolff lambasts ‘online abuse’ in wake of anonymous email

The email, which was sent from an anonymous Gmail address that referred to Wolff and George Russell in juvenile terms, was sent to the same mailing list as the anonymous email leak regarding Christian Horner back in February.

The contents of this email, which was sent by someone claiming to be working with Mercedes, referred to unhappiness within the team about “systemic sabotage” of Lewis Hamilton, as well as some more serious allegations which PlanetF1.com has opted against reproducing.

Wolff was asked about the email during Friday’s press conference in Spain, in which the Austrian confirmed the police are now investigating the matter as Mercedes is taking a zero-tolerance attitude to the matter of online abuse.

“Yeah, so it’s not from a member of the team,” he said.

PlanetF1.com understands the leading theory within Mercedes is a fan may have used the same email list as the email pertaining to Horner, by using a leaked list published online – the list containing the email addresses of permanent members of the F1 media, as well as leading F1 authorities and bosses.

“When we are getting these kinds of emails, and we’re getting tonnes of them, it is upsetting, particularly when there is somebody talking about death and all these things.

“So, on this particular one, I have instructed to go full force – we have the police inquiring, we are researching the IP address, we are researching the phone, all of that.

“Online abuse in that way needs to stop.

“People can’t hide behind their phones or their computers and abuse teams or drivers in a way like this.

“I don’t know what some of the conspiracy theorists and lunatics think out there.”

“Lewis was part of the team for 12 years. We have a friendship, we trust each other. We want to end this on a high, we want to celebrate the relationship and, if you don’t believe all of that, you can believe that we want to win the Constructors’ Championship and part of the World Championship is making both cars win – so to all of these mad people out there, take a shrink.”

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A major change over the winter saw the news break that Lewis Hamilton will part ways with Mercedes at the end of this season, in order to join Ferrari. It’s been an amicable parting of the ways so far, with both sides publicly wishing each other the best for the future as Hamilton chases a new career challenge with which he’ll likely round out his driving career.

But, with Hamilton struggling to keep pace with Russell for most of the season so far, the mood of some quarters of Hamilton’s fandom has changed – pointing the finger of blame for Hamilton’s performances firmly at Mercedes and Wolff.

Asked for his thoughts on the level of social media toxicity now being shown towards Mercedes, Wolff said he avoids the irrationality as much as possible.

“I’m not reading any comments. I don’t have social media. I think it’s important to protect oneself by doing so,” he said.

“There will always people will be there who have the laptop on the chest in the bedroom and just typing away. If people feel like they want to abuse and hide behind a made-up Instagram account, or anything else, that for me is… come up, say who you are, and we’ll take the criticism and discuss, but don’t hide.

“There seems to be lots of irrationality also. Because we want to be successful. We want to be successful with the most iconic driver the sport has ever had.

“The privilege that we had to work with Lewis as an incredible driver, and a great personality, that goes through the ups and downs like any other like any other sports person. I totally respect the reasons for him going to Ferrari. There is no grudge, there is no bad feeling.

“The interaction we have in the team is positive and so every comment from the outside of what is going on in the team is just simply wrong. But there’s always a limit.

“If emails are being sent or telephone numbers are being used for these messages then, for me, the joking stops and we will pursue it – whether that is successful or not, but there are limits to certain things and, obviously, online abuse is not something that happens only to us to the team or to the people.

“It happens badly to Lewis and to George and we’ve seen Max speaking out about it, and Kelly,” he said, referring to an incident last week in which Max Verstappen and long-time girlfriend Kelly Piquet also called out online abuse that has focused on the Brazilian model.

“People that abuse are cowards because they hide so, whatever’s going on out there with social media with all the good things that it provides and all those people that are being given a platform, that’s just the negatives that come with it.

“I have no feelings to someone who abuses for the reasons I just said before.”

While the police begin their investigations into the origin of the email sent regarding Mercedes, Red Bull opted to carry out an internal investigation to discover the source of the anonymous email pertaining to the Christian Horner allegations – an investigation which is still ongoing.

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