“It was really shocking how people can treat you,” Timo Glock sheds light on death threats he received post Lewis Hamilton’s 2008 title triumph


“It was really shocking how people can treat you,” Timo Glock sheds light on death threats he received post Lewis Hamilton’s 2008 title triumph

Timo Glock and Lewis Hamilton

Timo Glock, the former F1 driver has recently talked about the death threats he and his family received after he played an indirect part in handing Lewis Hamilton the 2008 F1 World Championship.

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Timo Glock, during the 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix was driving for the Toyota Racing team and while he was busy keeping his car on the track under the wet conditions, he could not have, in his wildest dreams thought that he was going to play an unprecedented part in the deciding the Championship.

That year, the title fight between Lewis Hamilton and Felippe Massa had stretched to the last race of the season, where a victory for Massa and a sixth-place or lower finish for Hamilton would have given the title to the former.

However, things took a drastic turn, when Lewis Hamilton overtook Timo Glock on the last lap of the race to secure a P5 finish, which proved good enough for the Brit to secure the title.

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For this incident, Glock has revealed, that he received a lot of abuse and death threats for some years to come after the incident.

Timo Glock’s take the whole 2008 Brazilian GP scandal

Timo Glock
Timo Glock

The 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix incident brings back painful memories for the German, but despite this fact, while discussing the incident recently, he added, “It was really shocking how people can treat you in a way where even my parents were scared.”

Getting letters back home, fans saying I should be banned from racing. Even people saying the guy should be killed and stuff like this – it was not nice. Every time when the Brazilian race came up, my Twitter account exploded. It’s still the case sometimes. Now it’s more the positive, the funny stuff, like the famous words ‘is that Glock?

Moreover, he has further revealed that it took the release of his final-lap onboard footage from F1 for the situation to get back under control.

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It changed quite a lot when the onboard came out.”

Formula1
Formula 1

I don’t know why F1 waited five years for it. But when that came out, it changed a lot of people’s minds.”

It didn’t change my confidence in myself. I just couldn’t understand why people thought I would help, or I would have made Lewis the World Champion. I was driving for Toyota. Why should I make Lewis the World Champion?

There was no way I could have been involved in anything because I just drove my race. And I tried to make the best out of it. So I could not understand why people were thinking I did it on purpose. I had no clue where I was in the race.”

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Timo Glock has given an in-detail review of the famous incident, and after looking at what the German has had to say about helping Lewis Hamilton win the 2008 Championship, it can be said that it was an unfortunate incident and fans should shy away from jumping onto conclusions immediately without knowing the whole story.

Because it causes F1 drivers a lot of pain and it was certainly the case with Timo Glock who had to go through utter misery for several years.