Red Bull Racing have released a statement expressing that they “sincerely regret” provoking a barrage of online abuse directed at Kimi Antonelli after the Qatar Grand Prix. The 19-year-old Mercedes driver faced death threats on his social media channels, leading him to blackout his Instagram profile.

Antonelli was defending fourth place from Lando Norris during the closing laps when he suffered a momentary loss of control, going off the circuit and allowing the McLaren racer through. That move had critical title implications for Max Verstappen, who saw his deficit grow from 10 points to 12 as a result of the pass.

Verstappen’s race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, came onto the radio to inform the four-time world champion that it appeared that Antonelli had “just pulled over and let Norris through.”

Helmut Marko also engaged in the speculation, telling Motorsport.com: “It was twice where he more or less waved Lando by. It was so obvious. Antonelli now helps our main competitor. In Austria, he was crashing [Verstappen] in the rear.”

After the race, fans noticed that Antonelli had turned his Instagram profile picture to a black screen. Express Sport understands that the 19-year-old received over 1,100 abusive comments on his personal social media accounts, with more spotted on the Mercedes team pages.

“Comments made before the end of and immediately after the Qatar GP suggesting that Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli had deliberately allowed Lando Norris to overtake him are clearly incorrect,” a Red Bull statement read. “Replay footage shows Antonelli momentarily losing control of his car, thus allowing Norris to pass him. We sincerely regret that this has led to Kimi receiving online abuse.”

Antonelli explained the mistake in the media pen after the race. “With the hard [tyre] I was pushing quite a lot, and eventually I was getting into DRS,” he said. “But I had a massive moment and almost crashed, so then I went off track and lost the place to Lando, which was very annoying.

“I was pretty comfortable because he was even out of the DRS for a couple of laps, and in dirty air, you just couldn’t get past. So, I felt I could have held him, but I just made a mistake.”

After the Grand Prix, Lambiase was spotted in conversation with Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff in the paddock, confirming that the two had ‘cleared the air’ after the Red Bull engineer’s exchange with Verstappen.