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- Haas F1 team driver Nikita Mazepin is four races in his Formula 1 career and is still trying to get the VF-21 racing car under control.
- Mazepin is still looking for his first points in Formula 1 after finishing 20th, 17th, 19th and 19th.
- Mazepin says part of his transformation into a Formula 1 is to cut back on social media usage and stay away from comments that are shooting at him.
Count Alpine’s Esteban Ocon as a Formula 1 driver who hopes he doesn’t face Haas F1 Team rookie Nikita Mazepin this weekend in Monaco.
More specifically, Ocon hopes Mazepin doesn’t meet him.
“If I run into him on the track, I am twice as cautious as anybody else,” Ocon said recently.
On Wednesday, during a Zoom media briefing ahead of Sunday’s Monaco F1 Grand Prix, Ocon doubled in size and didn’t deny having an eye on Mazepin during a track session.
Nikita Mazepin prepares for his first Grand Prix of F1 Monaco.
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“I’ve had a couple of real-life incidents where things happen,” said Ocon. “As soon as you take the track, your race weekend may be at risk. So you have to be 200 percent aware of everything that is happening. I’ve met Nikita a few times when he was on the line or something happened. Nothing serious yet happens, but I just have to be careful. “
To his credit, Mazepin straightened the ship a bit after being back in training on the first lap of this first race of the season in Bahrain and the next time in Imola. His first four races were 20th, 17th, 19th and 19th. He hasn’t finished the lead lap yet.
Mazepin doesn’t expect much better this weekend in Monaco.
“To be completely honest, I’m not too confident because I’ve struggled with the car so far this year,” Mazepin said on Wednesday. “I wasn’t able to get the most out of it and the balance (was) very late at the weekend when the handle with the soft links arrived, so I found the car very unpredictable most of the time.
“But as you know it’s a 23-race year and we’re still pretty early on. I think it’s very important to gain confidence in Monaco. The goals are to do laps and gradually build on that. Realistically speaking we have to do that. ” Find our way here. It’s a circuit and a driver skill that I think is very important here. I’m confident that I can work with myself, but of course it’s not easy knowing that there isn’t a lot of downforce in the car. “
On the other hand, Mazepin’s rookie teammate at Haas, Mick Schumacher, doesn’t see the same thing with the VF-21 machine.
“When you have a car that you trust, that you feel comfortable in, that will most likely help you get to Monaco, and the FP1, with a little more openness to learn the track,” said Schumacher. “If you have to learn to drive too, or if you don’t feel comfortable in the car, it definitely makes it a lot harder.
“I feel really good in the car and I’m excited to see how the VF-21 will drive through Monaco.”
Mazepin may still be a bit uncomfortable in his racing car, but appears to be okay with the hits he often receives on social media. Some in the social media world even nicknamed the 22-year-old driver a “Maze Spin” to highlight his early efforts to keep his car on the track.
“To be completely honest and have experience with the (online) situations, you have to be an active user of social media, which I can’t quite say,” he said. “There are obviously a couple of things that I find interesting, like sports and racing there – like seeing what F1 posts because they put out some very good inside content.
“But at the same time, when people like to see what they see, that’s important to them. But I don’t usually see it, especially on a race weekend. I only use my phone to talk to my team.” and that’s it.”
It was an Instagram post from Mazepin allegedly inappropriately touching a passenger in a car that Mazepin had put in hot water prior to the season. Since then, Mazepin has rarely posted any posts on his Facebook and Twitter pages. He has since made his Instagram page private.
This week Mazepin and Schumacher return to the location of the best days in Haas’ six-year Formula 1 history. In 2017, Haas drivers Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen finished eighth and tenth, marking the team’s first colon.
“This year we are far from coming home eighth and tenth. We know that and we can handle it. We are patient,” said Günther Steiner, director of the Haas F1 team. “When you think back to 2017, it was really cool to have that result in Monaco. It was another first for the team and they kept coming back at that time.
“We want to return to this level of performance.”
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