YAS MARINA, Abu Dhabi – Andrea Kimi Antonelli said support from friends and family helped him quickly forget the “difficult” online abuse he got after the Qatar Grand Prix, adding that Max Verstappen reached out to tell him to ignore the trolls.
The social media accounts of Italian teenager Antonelli, 19, were bombarded with over 1100 “severe or suspect comments,” including several death threats or messages wishing harm on him, after Red Bull inferred he had deliberately moved over and let Verstappen’s title rival Lando Norris by in the closing laps of the penultimate race of the season.
“I am not sure what happened to Antonelli there,” Verstappen’s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase told Verstappen over the radio at the end over team radio. “It looked like he just pulled over and let Lando through.”
Red Bull racing advisor Helmut Marko then doubled down on the comments in the media, saying it was “so obvious” Antonelli had simply let Norris by.
Antonelli’s boss Toto Wolff labelled Marko’s comments “brainless” hours after last week’s race, although he did say Lambiase had found him afterwards to clear the air.
Red Bull felt compelled this week to issue a statement saying it “sincerely regrets” the comments made after the race, added that the insinuation Antonelli had done so intentionally was “clearly incorrect.”
Antonelli spoke on the abuse in his Thursday media sessions ahead of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the last race of his rookie season.
“It was not easy to get all those kind of comments after the race, especially, you know, for something that I would never do, as waving past a competitor,” the Italian said. “I was fighting for P3, at the end of the day, I was pushing hard and I was trying to get into DRS of Sainz.
“After so many laps in dirty air and pushing so hard, the mistake arrived, because obviously every lap I was pushing a bit more and more to get closer and I arrived to the point where the tyre gave up and at the moment I did a mistake and Lando passed me and then after the race to receive those kind of comments definitely hurt.”
“It was nice to see the Red Bull statement. Also, GP [Lambiase] came to talk to me as well and we clarified. I also clarified with Max, and, you know, that was nice. But apart from that, you know, after that I got a lot of support, which was nice and definitely also it helped to kind of forget what happened and focus on to this weekend.”
Antonelli said Verstappen had reached out after the news of the abuse was made public by Mercedes.
“He saw what happened, so he wasn’t bothered by anything. He even showed support, so, you know, really, really, nice from him. I cannot really say what he said because it contained some bad words, the message! It just said don’t worry about these kind of people because they’re brainless. So, yeah, just focus on the job. He showed a lot of support.”
In the immediate aftermath of the abuse, Antonelli’s Instagram profile picture changed from one of him to a black square, although it has since been changed back again.
When asked if he likes using social media generally and whether he turns over the day-to-day running of it to someone else, he said: “Obviously the interaction with people is important but during the weekend I try to look the least amount possible, because I don’t want to get any distractions, I just really want to focus on the job.
“But after the race I got so many messages from friends showing me what was going on, you know, and because initially I wasn’t aware of it and then obviously I went looking at it and it was difficult to see, but now I forgot about it.”
