Kimi Antonelli once again target of social media abuse by Max Verstappen fans, forced to disable comments on social media post

Formula 1 Testing in Abu Dhabi - Source: Getty
Formula 1 Testing in Abu Dhabi - Source: Getty

Mercedes rookie Kimi Antonelli faced online abuse after the 2025 Qatar GP, as the Italian had an oversteer moment, which allowed Lando Norris to pass. Despite F1’s and FIA’s efforts to curb the abuse, Antonelli once again became a target and disabled the comments on his latest social media post.

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Max Verstappen's race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase and Helmut Marko claimed that Antonelli let Lando Norris pass at the Qatar GP to help the Mercedes customer team driver in the championship battle against the Dutchman. However, it was an honest mistake on the Italian’s end as he had a snap of oversteer going into the corner.

The comments made by GP and Marko led to Antonelli receiving online abuse, including death threats. A day after the race, Red Bull came out with a public statement in support of the Mercedes driver, while Helmut Marko accepted his mistake of making comments which weren't true.

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Kimi Antonelli also turned his Instagram profile picture to a black one amid the online abuse. Mercedes revealed that the youngster received over 1000 abusive messages. FIA came out and released a public statement, supporting the F1 rookie.

Going into the Abu Dhabi GP, Kimi Antonelli uploaded a post on his profile, which was a picture with the other 2026 season rookies, but the Italian once again received abusive messages in the comments. For the latest post shared by the Mercedes driver during the Abu Dhabi race weekend, he's disabled the comments section.

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The latest post was images from the season finale photoshoot with the trackside team and a caption that read,

“Love this team. Let's do this one last time this year”
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People in the comment section of the previous post have shown support for the Italian and suggested they were sorry that Antonelli had to disable the comments.


Kimi Antonelli was “hurt” by the online abuse after the Qatar GP

Kimi Antonelli spoke with the media ahead of the Abu Dhabi GP and clarified that he made a mistake as the old tires and the dirty air caused the snap of oversteer, which let Norris pass. The Mercedes star detailed how he was hurt to see the online abuse after the Qatar GP.

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“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. Then after the race, to receive those kind of comments, definitely it hurt,” said Antonelli.

Max Verstappen reached out to Antonelli after the online abuse. The Italian also went to apologise to the Dutchman for the mistake at the Qatar GP after the Red Bull star lost the title to Lando Norris. Verstappen smiled back at the Italian with no hard feelings about the incident.

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Edited by Pranay Bhagi
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