Charles Leclerc has shared some advice for Kimi Antonelli after the Mercedes driver suffered a torrent of social media abuse at the end of the F1 2025 season.<\/p>\n
Antonelli was hit with a barrage of vile abuse following a late-race mistake in Qatar that handed a valuable position to Lando Norris, an incident that some, baselessly, felt had been intentional to favour the McLaren driver in the Drivers\u2019 Championship.<\/p>\n
Charles Leclerc: \u2018Unacceptable\u2019 abuse towards Kimi Antonelli<\/p>\n
Want more PlanetF1.com coverage? Add us as a preferred source on Google<\/a> to your favourites list for news you can trust.<\/p>\n The vitriol with which Antonelli was hit was spurred on by post-race comments from then-Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko, with the Austrian stating his opinion that the Italian had made his mistake on purpose to help out Norris; the logic for this, presumably, being Mercedes\u2019 status as engine supplier to the McLaren team.<\/p>\n With the incident making Norris\u2019 task against Red Bull\u2019s Max Verstappen a little easier ahead of the season finale in Abu Dhabi, Verstappen\u2019s race engineer GianPiero Lambiase had insinuated similar over team radio, which fanned the flames further, but the Italian apologised to Mercedes for his remarks following the chequered flag and after the emotion of the moment had passed.<\/p>\n Marko\u2019s comments came well after this point, with Red Bull opting to release a statement to express its regret over the \u201cclearly incorrect\u201d comments; Marko\u2019s tenuous position within Red Bull is understood to have weakened further as a consequence of his words.<\/p>\n For Antonelli, the Italian went silent on social media by blanking out his profile picture and failing to post his usual post-race debrief status, while Mercedes communicated with the FIA regarding the extent of the abuse posted on Antonelli\u2019s and the team\u2019s social media channels, abuse which included death threats made against the 19-year-old.<\/p>\n With the FIA ramping up its United Against Online Abuse initiative as incidents of uproarious fan toxicity have become more common in recent years, other drivers have hit out against the negativity most have experienced at some point in their careers so far.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s unacceptable,\u201d Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc said in Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd obviously, those people face no consequence for their words and for their disrespect towards drivers. So yeah, it\u2019s not up to us to think about the consequences that they should endure, but it\u2019s a big shame because, as they said, we\u2019re all here trying to do our absolute best.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve done racing since we were kids, dreaming of being in that position, and today we\u2019re doing absolutely everything in order to be at the limit. And sometimes mistakes happen.<\/p>\n \u201cIn that particular case, also, the hate was for absolutely nothing. So yeah, I mean, I didn\u2019t speak with Kimi.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only thing that you can do in those kinds of moments is to ignore everything that is happening, but that\u2019s obviously very hard \u2013 especially when you are\u2026 I remember my first or second year in F1, you kind of look sometimes on social media at what\u2019s being said around you, or at least that was the case for me, and that makes it even more difficult.<\/p>\n \u201cSo yeah, then I think with experience you kind of get used to it, but we shouldn\u2019t really have to get used to this kind of behaviour, and I hope that one day it will be tackled properly.\u201d<\/p>\n Antonelli\u2019s teammate George Russell said there is \u201cno excuse\u201d for fans at home to act in such a manner.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s pretty unacceptable what happened and what was written and the abuse online,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously, it all started with a mistake from the Red Bull guys, and of course, they apologised, and that\u2019s okay.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople make a mistake, especially when you don\u2019t have the full facts. But I think those thousands of people behind their keyboards have no excuse and really need to take a hard look at themselves in the mirror and think why that is acceptable \u2013 not just for F1, but just society altogether. I just struggle to comprehend it, really. So that\u2019s all I can say.\u201d<\/p>\n More on Mercedes in F1<\/p>\n Who is Bradley Lord? Meet Toto Wolff\u2019s trusted Mercedes lieutenant<\/a><\/p>\n