Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko thinks it was "obvious" Andrea Kimi Antonelli let Lando Norris through on purpose at the end of Formula 1's Qatar Grand Prix.
Norris looked set to finish fifth behind Antonelli after a botched strategy call left him out of podium contention, with overtaking on Doha's Losail circuit very challenging without a significant speed advantage.
But on the penultimate lap Antonelli made a mistake by slipping the rear tyres and drifting off the track at Turn 10, allowing Norris to snatch away fourth and with it two crucial championship points, as he now heads to Abu Dhabi with a 12-point lead on Verstappen instead of 10.
On the radio Verstappen's race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase said it felt like Antonelli had just waved Norris by, and the team's veteran advisor Marko has come out and claimed it was "obvious" that was the case.
When quizzed after the race by Motorsport.com, Marko said: "it was twice where he more or less waved Lando by. It was so obvious," the Austrian said.
"Antonelli now helps our main competitor, in Austria he was crashing [Verstappen] in the rear."
Marko didn't explain why he was so convinced that was the case, as while McLaren is a Mercedes customer team, its team boss Toto Wolff has also not made a secret of his desire to bring Verstappen to Mercedes one day.
Antonelli explained he lost the car by being caught out in the dirty air of Carlos Sainz's Williams ahead of him.
"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."
Read and post comments