Max Verstappen demands social media action after Kimi Antonelli abuse

Max Verstappen has demanded that action is taken on social media, following the online abuse suffered by Kimi Antonelli after the Qatar GP. 

Antonelli received a horrific wave of online abuse and death threats after a mistake he made in the closing moments in the penultimate race of the season allowed Lando Norris to snatch fourth. 

Both Verstappen's race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase and advisor Helmut Marko made comments that Antonelli had let Norris past; however, that was based on replay footage shown on the world feed. 

Once both had seen what really happened, Lambiase apologised, as did Marko. A statement was also released by Red Bull, stressing Antonelli clearly made a mistake.

Verstappen believes the issue was the initial footage shown on the world feed, with only the replay having shown what truly happened.

"I think the problem was that first it came out that it looked like he just pulled over," Verstappen told select media including RacingNews365. 

"It was more the feed, so to speak. Then when you see the replay, you see that twice he really had a huge upset moment."

Verstappen did understand Lambiase's reaction in the moment, saying: "Yes, because that's the only footage they showed at that moment."

Verstappen issues Marko defence

According to Verstappen, Marko had also not seen any good footage of Antonelli's mistake prior to speaking to media.

Once Marko had seen comments, the Austrian retracted what he said about the young Italian, with Verstappen believing the issue is more with social media than Red Bull's advisor. 

"In the end it's about correcting it then," added Verstappen. "Look, what people say on social media, that's a problem with social media. That has nothing to do with what Helmut actually says. 

"That doesn't mean you're then suddenly allowed to totally trash someone, right? Whether you talk negatively or positively about someone.

"But that's a problem you have to address with social media, that people can just all just create accounts, even without a real name. 

"It's not regulated and that's the big problem. But if you see something the first time and then you've only seen the whole picture, then of course it's neat to say that we saw it wrong."

When Verstappen became aware of what was unfolding online against Antonelli, he immediately reached out to the driver and Mercedes boss Toto Wolff. 

"I was also immediately in touch with Kimi and Toto Wolff," said Verstappen. "I was in the car, so I had no idea what was going on until I saw the picture. It was pretty obvious what was happening there."