Dakota McManus & Naomi Schiff: This Is What Happened. Anything Else Is A Lie.

NAOMI: Dakota, I'm glad you decided to sit down and talk to me about the Leclerc Photos. I know this is a really big thing for you and that it's going to have far reaching affects on both your personal and professional life.

DAKOTA: Thank you, Naomi for agreeing to do this. Yeah, it was definitely a shock seeing those pictures come out, and I don't think I've fully processed it yet. As soon as I released that tweet I shut down my phone, I couldn't face the toxicity on the internet, which is why you had to go through Fabiana to set this up. Bless her, she's been so understanding through this whole mess.

NAOMI: How about we start our conversation on what this has been like for you. How have you felt in the aftermath?

DAKOTA: I've always been shit at emotions, and I think that's what got me here in the first place. When Danny called me, it was just a regular night, you know? We were at the villa in Imola, the villa we'd rented as a team, and I was finally starting to feel like all of the pieces of my life were back in place. I was feeling good about the steps I was taking with my job, I was in a very good place with Yuki and after we finished the race in Australia, people were finally letting go of what happened in Saudi. 

There is no good way to describe the horror that I felt when I saw those pictures. Pictures from one of my most vulnerable and shameful moments. A moment that now fills me with guilt. I've been grappling with how to tell Yuki for months now, and the last chance I had to own up to my mistakes with the people that matter to me the most has been taken away from me by some nameless troll on the internet.

I almost couldn't get out of bed this morning. I felt numb. I didn't know how I could possibly come into the paddock this morning and act like nothing was wrong, which is what Helmut Marko told me that I needed to do. He told me that I couldn't show any weakness while I was at the track, that it would just ruin me further.

NAOMI: Why did you agree to talk about this with me? Why did you decide that you needed to sit down and do a proper interview to explain your side of the situation rather than simply releasing a statement?

DAKOTA: I've realized that hard way over past few years that a lot of people look up to me, young girls in particular. And I want to show them that it's okay to make mistakes, even mistakes as big as this one. Because let's face it, sleeping with Charles is not one of my finer moments. I don't think that taking responsibility is really bad thing in this case, I think it shows a certain kind of integrity on my part for owning my mistake.

NAOMI: I don't want to overstep here, but how does Yuki feel?

DAKOTA: He's worried. Bless him, he's worried more about how I feel than he is about the pictures. I've already told him what I came here to tell you today and he was more concerned that something that he had done had pushed me to do what I did with Charles, and I think he's scared that I'm never going to be able to recover from this.

NAOMI: And I just want to clarify one thing before we move on to the next question. Is that okay?

DAKOTA: Of course.

NAOMI: Were you and Yuki Tusnoda in a committed relationship the night that you went home with Charles Leclerc?

DAKOTA: No. No I was not. We didn't start out relationship officially until about two and a half weeks later when we began to soft launch it on social media. When I hooked up with Charles, I was a free agent. A single woman with too much alcohol in her system.

NAOMI: Now, the question we've all been asking. What really happened that night in Azerbaijan?

( im gonna do a proper chapter to illustrate what happened that night do not worry ! )