How do you solve a problem like Nikita Mazepin?

Nikita Mazepin arrived in Formula 1 under a cloud he made himself. And he has not been redeemed since then.

Mazepin, the son of a billionaire oligarch, signed with Haas for the 2021 season and immediately embarrassed himself and the sport by filming himself palpating a woman’s breasts just before the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Spending the first week of a new job by first convicting you as “hideous” by your own team and then being charged by both F1 and FIA before you’ve even turned the wheel of a car is quite a start.

Not that this was Mazepin’s first “controversy” for legal reasons that I have to mention. While driving in the Junior Series Formula 3, he attacked rival Callum Ilott so severely that Ilott suffered cuts on his face and a swollen jaw. Mazepin was banned from race as a punishment. Mazepin also ended the 2019 Formula 2 season with so many penalties that he almost missed the final race, which would have been a problem as he had to be placed high enough to earn a super license. And off the track, he was celebrated during the funeral for miners killed in his father’s operations.

The hashtag #WeSayNoToMazepin has been trendy since the groping incident. Last season, Mazepin made the regrettably quotable statement that he wanted his “race to do the talking.” All very well unless you leave your first F1 race after just a few corners from Bahrain.

To be honest, the Haas car this year is a completely undrivable dog of a vehicle that is particularly prone to get messed up if exposed to anything that could be classified as “weather.” It is therefore not an easy situation for a newcomer to F1. Even so, Mazepin didn’t help the situation with further twists at Imola and by being punished for a blue flag incident where he was told to let Sergio Perez outflank him. It was an incident where it was clear in control of the race that they were alerted to a near-collision caused by – you guessed it – Mazepin.

For a sport with athletes who tend not to mingle with the occasional drama drama found in some other series, it takes a lot for a driver to earn a reputation as a mobile chicane in F1 these days. But from violating a “gentleman’s agreement” to jumping the order of the cars during an out lap in qualifying in Bahrain to blocking Lando Norris during the same session at the Spanish Grand Prix, it’s fair to say Mazepin isn’t friends finds and influences people among his fellow passengers.

Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc was so frustrated when he was blocked during free practice on Friday that he said on the radio “Mazepin will never change” and asked his team to report the incident to race officials.

Esteban Ocon said: “When we cross paths on the track, I treat him 200 percent more attentively than any other driver.” Which, since she only laps the Haas during free practice or while Ocon’s Alpine car is driving, is pretty an explanation.

During the Spanish Grand Prix, the broadcasters had access to the radio directly between the pit walls of the team and the race control for the first time. Everyone heard the message from Toto Wolff, in which he asked the race management to move Mazepin to move. As F1 racing director Michael Masi said, this was a rare announcement from Mercedes. And even Mazepin’s own team-mate Mick Schumacher – one of the toughest diplomatic drivers of all time – admitted he first heard of Mazepin when he was warned about Mazepin’s aggressive karting.

Mazepin has very few defenders. When Lance Stroll was struggling at the bottom of the grid a few years ago, Lewis Hamilton defended him, saying it was too easy to criticize a rookie when F1 was an extremely difficult move for a driver. There was no rush from someone sympathetic to Mazepin, whose latest charm offensive included making sure everyone knew he wasn’t kneeling to protest racism during the pre-race anti-racism demonstration on Sunday.

It is unlikely that after just four races there has ever been a driver who was so generally and vocally rejected by his colleagues. And there are quite a few precedents in place for drivers sticking together even when things go to hell. After Bertrand Gachot was convicted of assault for assaulting a London taxi driver, Grand Prix drivers wore solidarity t-shirts at the race, which he was unable to participate in because he was in jail.

Prior to the season, public anger raged against Mazepin for failing to address the groping video. But he’s making money in F1 – to the point where the Haas team has now officially been renamed the Uralkali Haas – after Mazepin’s father’s chemical and mining empire. With money, you’ve come a long way in a sport that burns through cash like brake discs.

That’s a problem. If after four races the drivers are already nervous about even passively sharing the track with Mazepin (none of the incidents he was involved in was actually overtaking or battling for position) then it seems like he isn’t corresponds to the correct standard. Despite being new to driving the Haas car, Mazepin went through an extensive private testing and coaching program with Mercedes in 2019 and probably spent more hours in a (relatively) modern F1 car than any rookie who made his debut since the F1 – Gave restricted private testing.

Haas team boss Steiner suspected that this might actually have set Mazepin back a little, as the Haas car doesn’t drive like a Mercedes car, but the reality is that Mazepin’s teammate Schumacher had tested in a Ferrari preseason and doesn’t seem the same Have trouble.

So what is the F1 supposed to do? Mazepin feels like a concentration of his other problems. From an extremely divided initiative called We Race As One, which shows exactly how little 20 drivers can agree to protest against racism, to the push-pull problem that they want to call themselves the highest level of motorsport in the world, but So financially under pressure It takes billionaire children to pay for a seat.

F1 is more complex than ever and, to the slight surprise of many fans, has had one of the best years in ages. Lewis Hamilton’s successes on and off the track have brought the sport to light in mainstream spaces he never thought of, and things like Netflix’s Drive To Survive have attracted more new fans than ever before.

But there is a contradiction in terms: The biggest and most elite sporting spectacle in the motor sport world (as it is called in PR) is given as a ransom to a below-average driver whose off-track actions were rightly condemned and whose on-track record brings him a measure of peer respect, which is best described as underground, all because otherwise a team cannot afford to race. Even with Mazepin’s money, it cannot afford to be competitive. Haas hasn’t scored a point yet and most likely won’t this season.

Backmarkers rarely attract attention in F1 unless it’s their epic flaws, which could be said to at least reward Dmitry Mazepin’s investment with sponsor’s airtime. Fans expressed their anger that Mazepin had joined the series before he even did, and she was mostly stonewalled. Haas said he was privy to the video groping incident but never made a statement. Neither was it stated where it was harassment or what further consequences a repetition would have.

Now that other drivers and teams are getting out on the track, the FIA ​​can respond to incidents with penalty points and ultimately ban Mazepin from racing if he raises enough money. But if the team is still held up over the money pit that got them to sign him (ironically, through Callum Ilott) then even that may not really have any real consequence.

F1 began as a haven for rich boys to drive fast cars and take enormous risks. But 70 years later, this isn’t the massive arms race in engineering research it has turned into, and the injustice of Mazepin’s presence in it grinds like a poorly calibrated gearbox failing to meet the demands of 2021.

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