‘Brainless’ trolls get short shrift as Verstappen checks in on Antonelli after Qatar storm
Max Verstappen sent Kimi Antonelli a blunt, supportive message after the Mercedes rookie was targeted with online abuse in the wake of the Qatar Grand Prix — and it wasn’t exactly fit for print.
Antonelli, 19, owned up to a late mistake in Lusail while chasing Carlos Sainz that opened the door for Lando Norris to grab fourth, a small but potentially pivotal two-point swing heading into the Abu Dhabi finale. What followed wasn’t the usual Monday-morning analysis but a wave of social media bile, stoked in part by Helmut Marko’s suggestion that the Italian had moved aside on purpose.
Red Bull later rowed that back, issuing a statement calling those claims “clearly incorrect” and expressing “sincere regret” that they may have contributed to the abuse directed at Antonelli. Inside the paddock, the tone was different. Gianpiero Lambiase, Red Bull’s head of race engineering and Verstappen’s long-time right hand, crossed the garage divide to speak to the teenager. Verstappen, too, reached out privately.
“I also clarified with Max and that was nice,” Antonelli said in Abu Dhabi. “He saw what happened. He wasn’t bothered by anything. He even showed support.”
Exactly what Verstappen wrote will stay in the DMs. “I could not really say what he said, because the message contained some bad words,” Antonelli smiled, “but he just said: ‘Don’t worry about these kind of people, because they’re brainless. So, just focus on the job.’”
The job, in Qatar, was managing the final laps in heavy dirty air while trying to latch onto Sainz’s DRS. It got away from him.
“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 explained. “After so many laps in dirty air and pushing so hard, the mistake arrived… I arrived to the point where the tyre gave up. And at the moment, I did a mistake and Lando went past me.”
That’s racing. The online reaction, he admitted, stung. “It was not easy to get all those kinds of comments after the race, especially for something that I would never do, such as waving past a competitor,” he said. “Then after the race, to receive those kind of comments definitely hurt. But it was nice to see the Red Bull statement. Also, GP came to talk to me as well and we clarified.”
For a rookie, the speed of modern F1 isn’t just found through high-speed corners. The narrative shifts at warp speed too. One clip, one quote, and the pile-on begins. The encouraging part here is how quickly the sport’s heavy hitters moved to steady the teenager. Lambiase rarely wastes a word; if he’s taking the time, it matters. Verstappen’s message — spicy, sure — had the right target.
Antonelli’s focus, as he put it, is now where it should be: “I got a lot of support, which was nice, and definitely also it helped to kind of forget what happened and focus onto this weekend.”
The finale in Abu Dhabi arrives with the title fight still breathing and small margins looming large — which is precisely why Norris’s late grab in Qatar carried weight. But it’s also a reminder of what the series is juggling in 2025: fierce competition on track, and the need to keep the worst of the noise off it.
On Sunday night under the Yas Marina lights, the conversation will snap back to lap times, tyre offsets and points thresholds. In the meantime, the paddock showed a rare bit of unity: a young driver made an error while going for it, absorbed a cheap shot online, and the reigning champion told him to ignore the trolls and get back to work. That’s the only message worth amplifying.
