Kimi Antonelli breaks silence after Red Bull accusations cause social media backlash

Kimi Antonelli has finally opened up after the Italian driver was attacked online by fans following accusations from Red Bull. The race in Qatar was an intense one that ultimately saw Max Verstappen win and significantly close the gap to Lando Norris in the championship.

While the overall result was positive for the Red Bull driver, a few team members were unhappy with young Kimi Antonelli. On the second-to-last lap of the race, the Mercedes driver made an error, which meant Lando Norris would jump him and make up another position. Hence, instead of finishing in P5, the McLaren driver would finish in P4.

While the onboards showed that Kimi Antonelli had made an error, first Max Verstappen's engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, and then Red Bull's Helmut Marko would accuse the Italian of willingly letting Lando Norris through. The accusations were accompanied by a whirlwind of abuse towards the Mercedes driver soon after, and it was later revealed that he received close to a thousand abusive messages on his social media account.

The very next day, Red Bull would issue a statement apologizing for what had happened. On the eve of the season finale in Abu Dhabi, Kimi Antonelli spoke for the first time since facing the social media backlash, as he said,

"It was not easy to get all those kind of comments, after the race, especially for something that I would never do such as waving past a competitor. I was fighting for P3. At the end of the day, I was pushing hard and I was trying to get into the DRS of Sainz."

He added,

"After so many laps in dirty air I'm pushing so hard, the mistake arrived, because I 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. At that moment I did a mistake and Lando passed me and, you know, then after the race to receive those kind of comments, definitely it hurt."

Kimi Antonelli reveals Max Verstappen reached out to him

Talking about the backlash that he got, Kimi Antonelli revealed that Max Verstappen had reached out to him after the social media backlash. The Italian talked about how it wasn't only the Dutch driver, but race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase also had a chat with him to clear the air. He said,

"It was nice to see the Red Bull statement, also GP came to talk to me as well and we clarified, I also clarified with Max and that was nice. But apart from that, 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 onto this weekend."

Heading into the final race of the season, Kimi Antonelli is chasing a P6 finish in the championship. He needs to outscore Lewis Hamilton by two points this weekend to make a jump in the championship standings.