The first race of the Uralkali Haas F1 Team’s ‘new era’ didn’t exactly go to plan, with two rookies in an already underdeveloped, tail happy car there are bound to be mistakes with both Nikita Mazepin and Mick Schumacher taking trips off the track, Mazepin’s ending his race on the first lap.
However, both drivers have shown visible signs of improving over pre-season testing and their first Formula 1 Grand Prix weekend, the team will be hoping that all of these learning experiences will put both drivers and the team in a more advantageous position for the 2022 regulation changes.
Nikita Mazepin doesn’t believe that his first lap crash was down to anything else except personal error, the Russian got a good start so much so that he was trying to avoid hitting his team-mate Schumacher who had a inferior start to the Russian and he lost the car – the combination of cold tyres and the kerb combining to cause his spin.
“It was very simple – I made a mistake. It was just one of those things. My start had been good, I got into turn one taking the outside line. I was then going through turn two and I was really trying to avoid Mick (Schumacher) as he was close and got too much on power – the tires didn’t take it”
Mazepin is very apologetic to the whole team as they deserved much better than the performance he gave after working so hard all weekend, despite this there will always be positives that the Russian can take away from the weekend and use this experience going forward into future Grand Prix’s.
“I’m very sorry for the team as they deserved to do much better than that. Obviously, there’s always positives you can take – the learning experience is obviously there.”
