What Just Happened To Kimi Antonelli?
How One Comment Turned Qatar Ugly
The Qatar Grand Prix should be remembered for three things:
McLaren’s strategy fumble that threw away a stronger result.
Oscar Piastri’s amazing weekend somehow ending with him demoted in the standings.
Hannah Schmitz’s brilliant race execution on the Red Bull pit wall, turning a difficult day into exactly the result Max Verstappen needed.
Instead, the story became a wave of hate aimed at 19-year-old rookie Kimi Antonelli – fuelled not just by hot-headed radio, but by Helmut Marko choosing, after the race and after seeing replays, to push a narrative that simply wasn’t true.
1. The racing bit: how we got here
Late in the race, Antonelli is in real traffic, in dirty air, trying to hang on in a nervous Mercedes. On the penultimate lap, he has a snap of oversteer, runs wide, loses momentum – and Lando Norris drives past.
On paper, that single mistake:
Hands Norris two extra points in the title fight with Verstappen (a 12-point lead instead of 10), and
Locks in the weird reality where Piastri’s phenomenal weekend leaves him worse off in the standings than his pace deserved.
From a pure racing perspective: rookie error, harsh consequence, story over.
2. GP vs Marko – why timing matters
Two different Red Bull voices reacted very differently in time.
Gianpiero “GP” Lambiase – Verstappen’s race engineer
Makes his comment live, in the middle of the Grand Prix.
From the pit wall, with no proper replay yet, it looks like Antonelli has just made life very easy for Norris.
He says, essentially, “it looks like he let him by.”
That’s classic in-race adrenaline: incomplete information, one glance at a monitor, straight into the radio.
Helmut Marko – Red Bull advisor
Talks to the media after the race.
By then, full replays are available. The onboard shows a snap of oversteer in dirty air, the car stepping out, and Norris driving into the gap.
Despite that, Marko tells reporters it was “so obvious” Antonelli “waved Lando by” and insists the move was deliberate.
That’s the key difference.
GP shot his mouth off while still flying blind, then later accepted he hadn’t seen the full picture.
Marko spoke later, with the same replays everyone else had already seen – a clear mistake, no lift of the throttle, no weird steering input – and still chose to harden the idea that Antonelli had essentially helped McLaren and hurt Max on purpose.
That isn’t an emotional misfire in the heat of battle. That’s choosing a story.
3. From framing to fury: the overnight spiral
Once that “waved him by” line is out in the wild, the chain reaction is painfully predictable:
Clips of the Norris overtake and quotes from Marko get cut up and shared.
The conspiratorial corner of the Verstappen fan ecosystem latches onto it: Antonelli didn’t just make a mistake; he “screwed Max.”
Antonelli’s social feeds are hit by a wave of abuse.
Not just “you bottled it, kid” level stuff, but a documented flood of:
Over a thousand abusive messages across his accounts,
Hundreds more on Mercedes channels,
Death threats, slurs, and wishes of harm, all over a single mistake on one lap.
Antonelli blacks out his profile picture. Mercedes start collecting and flagging the worst of it and take the numbers to F1’s anti-abuse program. Toto Wolff brands the collusion claims “brainless” and “total nonsense,” pointing out there is zero logical incentive for Mercedes to sacrifice their own constructors battle or Antonelli’s fight for P3 in the championship.
Only once the volume and nature of the abuse is public do Red Bull walk it back. The team issues a statement saying the earlier comments were “clearly incorrect,” acknowledging that the replay shows Antonelli losing control in dirty air and that the overtake was not intentional. They add that they “sincerely regret” the online abuse he has received.
But by that point, the hate is already in his inbox. You don’t un-send a thousand threats with a paragraph of corporate regret.
And the crucial point remains: unlike GP’s live radio, Marko made his comments after seeing exactly what we all saw – an obvious mistake – and still chose to spread the opposite.
4. The story that should’ve led: Hannah vs McLaren
All of this noise drowned out what actually decided the race.
On McLaren’s side:
They arrived in Qatar with the fastest car and a front-row lockout, Piastri on pole.
An early safety car created a perfect window to tick off the first of the mandated two stops.
Every other front-running team jumped in. McLaren left both cars out.
That single decision:
Likely cost Piastri a win he had earned on pace,
Dropped Norris off the podium,
And let Verstappen’s alternate strategy take control of the race.
Oscar ends up second on the road, but shuffled back in the standings. His “dream” weekend turns into a net loss versus Verstappen and Norris in the title maths.
On Red Bull’s side:
Hannah Schmitz’s pre-race plan said “if there’s a safety car at this point, we pit.”
When the safety car actually appears and both McLarens stay out, doubt creeps in on the Red Bull pit wall – nobody wants to be the only one to jump and get it wrong.
Schmitz backs her own read, doubles down on the call and brings Verstappen in anyway.
That one moment of conviction sets up the entire rest of the race:
Max gets the cheap stop under the safety car,
Red Bull stay inside the stint limits on tyres without having to run risky long runs,
And the race flows back toward Verstappen while McLaren are stuck paying full price later.
She executes the rest of the afternoon perfectly – reading traffic, timing stops, managing track position – and Verstappen turns what should have been damage limitation into his 70th win and a live shot at the title going to Abu Dhabi.
Hannah is on the podium representing the team for a reason. This was her race as much as Max’s.
The headline out of Qatar should have been:
McLaren fumble the call, Oscar gets short-changed by the bigger picture, Hannah Schmitz saves Red Bull’s title shot from the pit wall.
Instead, her work and Oscar’s weekend are pushed to the margins by a fake story about what a rookie did in one corner.
5. Max Verstappen’s loudest fans vs normal sports disappointment
Most sports fans, whichever crest they wear, follow a familiar pattern when things go wrong:
Swear at the TV.
Complain about strategy, bad luck, referees, you name it.
Vent in the group chat, maybe post a bitter meme.
Sleep on it and move on.
There are plenty of Verstappen fans who behave exactly like that – completely normal, completely healthy.
But around Max there’s also a very loud slice of fandom that tends to handle dissatisfaction differently, and the Antonelli episode shows all of it:
Conspiracy is the first instinct.
The immediate reaction isn’t “our rivals out-strategised us” or “a kid made a mistake,” it’s “someone did this to Max.”A named villain is mandatory.
Blame doesn’t stop at “Mercedes” or “strategy.” It settles on a person: Kimi Antonelli today, a race director yesterday, a rival driver tomorrow.Harassment becomes a reflex, not a glitch.
Threats, slurs and intimidation aren’t treated as a shocking exception; they’re an almost routine part of the fallout after any perceived injustice.
When a senior figure like Marko, speaking after the dust has settled, chooses to repeat and sharpen a story that points the finger at a 19-year-old, it isn’t just careless wording. It’s feeding exactly that reflex.
And the result is what we saw: a rookie driver turned into a lightning rod, not because of what he actually did, but because of how someone chose to describe it.
6. Why Qatar has to be a line in the sand
Qatar should be the race we remember as:
The day McLaren threw away a likely win on the pit wall.
The day Oscar Piastri’s excellence wasn’t reflected in his points haul.
The day Hannah Schmitz delivered a strategy masterclass that kept Verstappen’s title alive.
Instead, it’s another case study in how a few words from the top can turn a normal racing mistake into a hate campaign.
If Formula 1 is serious about driver welfare and the kind of fan culture it wants, anti-abuse hashtags between races are not enough. The people with microphones – especially the ones speaking calmly, after watching the same replays the rest of us see – have to stop painting targets on young drivers’ backs.
Kimi Antonelli deserved a tough debrief and a lesson about racing in dirty air at 300 km/h.
Oscar Piastri deserved straightforward praise and analysis for an outstanding, gut-punch weekend.
Hannah Schmitz deserved the spotlight for reading the race better than anyone else.
Instead, all three were overshadowed by a story that never should have existed in the first place.
Sources
Reuters – “Red Bull regret suggesting Antonelli moved aside for Norris” (Dec 1, 2025) Reuters
The Race – “1000+ abusive messages sent to Antonelli after Marko criticism” (Dec 1, 2025) The Race
Formula 1 – “Piastri ‘speechless’ as he rues team strategy error in ‘gut-wrenching’ Qatar GP” (Nov 30, 2025) Formula 1® - The Official F1® Website
Motorsport.com – “‘Are you sure you want to pit?’ – How Red Bull nearly fell into the same trap as McLaren” (Dec 1, 2025) Motorsport.com
AutoHebdo – “Hannah Schmitz reveals the behind-the-scenes of Red Bull’s strategy in Qatar” (Dec 1, 2025) AutoHebdo
Written December 2nd 2025 by Shane Canekeratne