Lewis Hamilton being sabotaged by Mercedes? All about the alleged anonymous e-mail leaked to F1 journalists

A recent report claims that many F1 journalists have received an anonymous email claiming that Lewis Hamilton is being sabotaged by Mercedes. One of the journalists who received the alleged email was Daily Mail's Jonathan McEvoy.

Before the 2024 F1 season began, Ferrari announced Lewis Hamilton for 2025. This left Mercedes with a vacant driver seat to fill by the end of 2024. Since the Brit's name was synonymous with the team, his move affected many in the F1 community.

In almost every race in 2024, Hamilton was out-qualified by his teammate, George Russell. The seven-time world champion speculated that he would not be able to out-qualify Russell in the entire 2024 season. This sparked rumors about whether the team was favoring Russell over Hamilton.

These speculations peaked at the Canadian GP, where Hamilton claimed that his qualifying tires were colder than usual. The tire strategy by Mercedes during the race was also questionable since it gave Russell an upper edge over Hamilton.

As reported by Jonathan McEvoy in Daily Mail on June 20, he and many other journalists received an anonymous email on June 10, claiming that Lewis Hamilton was being sabotaged by Mercedes. The sender claimed that they were a Mercedes employee. The email read (via Daily Mail):

"Some of us in the team are unhappy about the systematic sabotaging of Lewis, his car, his tyre strategy, his race strategy and his mental health. Lewis is excluded and some underhanded (sic) things are going on that people need to be aware of."

"Ask the questions and the truth will out. It is all in the data and is recorded. With the exception of Bono (Peter Bonnington, Hamilton's race engineer) and those of us who love Lewis, others are on a dangerous course that could ultimately be life threatening to Lewis, other drivers, even the public. A cold tyre strategy is a death warrant."

Following the email, McEvoy also claimed that he and other reporters received WhatsApp messages with similar sentiments from another anonymous person.

According to the reporter, Mercedes refuted claims of the anonymous sender being from their camp and suggested that it was a fan. The team also reportedly tried to track down the email sender by investigating its IP address but failed.

Before the 2024 F1 Spanish GP, Lewis Hamilton himself claimed that he was unaware of the email.

McEvoy also stated that the email was sent to the same list of F1 journalists who once received leaks about Christian Horner's exchanges with Red Bull's female employee in March.

As of now, there is no official confirmation whether the claims in the email are true or not.

---

Mercedes technical director dismisses claims of Lewis Hamilton being disadvantaged in the team

Mercedes technical director James Allison recently claimed that Mercedes were not intentionally sabotaging Lewis Hamilton.

Speaking on Formula 1's "Beyond the Grid" podcast, he denied rumors about the team systematically disrupting the Brit's performance and claimed that the cars were similar. He added that the only difference between the two Mercedes W15s can be because of different setups.

“I think that if you try and read into that stuff that isn't there, like there's somehow he's got a systematic disadvantage on qualifying day, that's not true and not fair. So far as we can make it, the cars are identical,” Allison said (36:58).

“The engine use is identical. If the cars are different on setup, it's because that's what the driving engineering team on either side of the garage have iterated to, but they have the chance to have identical stuff if they chose,” he added.

Lewis Hamilton is currently eighth in the drivers' championship table with only 55 points. On the other hand, his teammate George Russell is in seventh place with 69 points.