Mazepin wanted to get past his teammate at Turn 5 shortly after the pair exited the pit lane after the red flag stop caused by Lance Stroll.
This led to an exchange between Mazepin and race engineer Dominic Haines, with Haas’ chief race engineer Ayao Komatsu having to throw in at the end.
Mazepin to race engineer Dominic Haines: “OK, I have to overtake him because he drives too slowly”.
Haines: “Negative, stay back, please stay back”.
Mazepin: “Are you laughing?”
Komatsu steps in: “I’m not laughing, Nikita – if you want to make room now, make room now”.
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After this radio message, Mazepin pulled back significantly before turning his final lap of the session.
Mazepin’s frustration stems from an incident at the Dutch Grand Prix in which he was ahead of Schumacher but the German was given permission by the team to overtake him, resulting in a chaotic end to qualifying at Zandvoort.
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Mazepin explained the situation in Mexico: “This is a constant topic. The last time we had this was at Zandvoort where it was said that there might be some circumstance that could override the rule the other side of the team was making at the time. And then I had the feeling that my qualifying was screwed up.
“So today I had the feeling, in a rush, what it was like, a teammate of mine had a vacant seat up front and wasn’t as fast as he could have, so I had the feeling that he might have done that for the Needs tires.
“I had to go faster to break in my tires and I tried to move forward but got a ‘no’. I respect the orders the team gives me and I stayed behind, so it’s no big deal, it just seems like the rules on the team side are different. “
Schumacher dismissed Mazepin’s complaints, saying, “There’s no real reason to be upset”.
“I think that the team gave clear instructions and I think that these instructions were followed by both sides, on my part,” added Schumacher.
“I think there is no real reason to be upset in any way.”
Team boss Günther Steiner made it clear that Haas had decided to stick to his original rule that the drivers must not overtake each other in order to avoid a repetition of what happened in Zandvoort.
“We discussed it after Zandvoort and decided that we would stick with what we are doing. In the end, Nikita is in a better position than Mick because he had no traffic on his lap and his tires were on temperature anyway.
“He asked the question, but the drivers don’t see what’s in front because he might pass Mick and then get stuck again. So why should we do it, because then there is always the risk that they will race between them again as in Zandvoort? So let’s stop it before it happens.
“And those are the clear instructions that we gave to Zandvoort. We have the whole field under control, we see them all in front and we see how many cars are in front. We know where you’ll end up on your qualifying lap, and if you cross the start-finish line, you’ll screw up a lap.
“This is how you deal with it and in the end it worked out well for both of them because we know what we are doing. I think it will take a while, but they understand. “
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