Mercedes said it appreciated Red Bull’s statement seeking to end the abuse suffered by Kimi Antonelli following comments from company officials regarding his driving at the Qatar Grand Prix.
Antonelli was running fourth in front of Lando Norris in the final stages of the race, but ran wide at Turn 10 and lost position on the exit of the corner. As a result of the mistake, Norris scored two points compared to race winner Max Verstappen, but Verstappen’s race engineer Giampiero Lambiase and Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko both suggested he would let championship leader Antonelli pass.
After Antonelli faced online abuse and had his social media profile picture blackened, Red Bull issued a statement on Monday clarifying that the comments were inaccurate and saying it regretted the abuse the Italian rookie had received, which Mercedes deputy technical director Simone Resta said was appreciated by the team.
“For me, for us and for the whole team, (the abuse) is very unfortunate,” Resta said. “And we take online abuse very seriously. Together with our communications team, we’re doing a lot of work on tools and platforms to create safe areas for fans to interact with the team. On top of that, it was great to see a statement from Red Bull on Monday expressing their position. And we really appreciate this.”
“Overall, Kimi, the engineers, the team, we are all working very cohesively to maximize our potential in Abu Dhabi and get the best possible result in Abu Dhabi, aiming to achieve our goal of second place in the constructors class.”
Explaining how the error happened, Lesta suggested that the challenge of closely following other cars on a high-speed circuit like Qatar was a key factor that needed to be taken into account.
“Kimi was driving pretty close to the limit. He had a longer stint than Norris behind him and was also trying to catch up with (Carlos) Sainz in front,” said Resta. “He entered the DRS zone, got very close to Sainz and lost a lot of aerodynamic load due to wake effects.
“So he was trying to attack, but he was also trying to defend, and he was at his limit. And then there was a snap, and he just lost position just enough to get Norris out of position.”
