Steiner on Mazepin’s flawed F1 debut in Bahrain | F1

Haas Formula 1 team boss Günther Steiner has announced that Nikita Mazepin was “pretty beaten” by his opening lap at the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Mazepin crashed out of his first F1 race on the first lap and spun at the end of Turn 2.

The Russian rookie spun twice in practice and twice in qualifying.

Despite his faulty weekend, Steiner confirmed that the team put their arm around him to restore his confidence before the next race at Imola.

“Yes, he was pretty beaten up, said Steiner. “I just told him to keep his head up and keep going. Sure, what happened is not ideal, but it did.

“He got into a pretty good beating afterwards, but he’s ready to go again. We pushed him back up, but otherwise Mick did a good job. At least we got half of what we wanted to achieve, 50 percent there. “

Mazepin came under fire in the off-season after a video surfaced on his Instagram story of groping a woman’s chest in the back of a car before it was deleted.

On the subject of matching items

Steiner was asked whether the criticism of the winter period had influenced Mazepin before the new season. He replied, “It’s difficult to answer because I haven’t really thought about it that much. Sure it’s not good and you always want to prove yourself right.

“I don’t know how much it affects you, nobody, especially at a young age, can turn it off completely. He seemed in a good place when we started testing. It started in a pretty good place. Not only would I put it down to that, but having a winter like this is certainly never an advantage. “

Steiner rejected proposals. Mazepin was too eager to prove otherwise to his doubters in Bahrain.

On the subject of matching items

“He pushed, he wanted to push. His race on Sunday wasn’t long, so he wasn’t over-motivated for a long time because he only made it to Turn 3. Sure he overdid it, but like I said, he doesn’t feel good about it, on the contrary, he feels bad about it. “