To be very clear: America’s only Formula 1 team has a PR situation this season that can best be described as “hellish”. His car is a hot mess that only gets airtime when it’s in the gravel, its former drivers (Grosjean and Magnussen) are thriving in the US, and although he signed Michael Schumacher’s literal son to one of his seats, it is the other driver, Nikita Mazepin, who drew attention to the team before, during and after the presentation of this year’s car.
That’s not the PR team’s fault, they’re just trying to do a job. There really is no one to blame Haas, Bar Mazepin himself, whose billionaire father is currently paying the bills to keep the lights on so the team won’t lose him anytime soon.
Mazepin put his entire foot in his mouth at the start of the season saying he wanted to speak on the track. You can say something like that if you are Max Verstappen and fight your way past Lewis Hamilton for the title lead. It is less advisable if you have a real dog from a car and are a beginner with mediocre F2 results.
Needless to say, the lecture on the track wasn’t an outstanding speaking performance. Nothing really can be expected from either Haas driver this season as the car is deviating from pace millions of kilometers and there is very little hope of scooping a point unless there is total chaos at the front. During Spielberg’s short lap last weekend, Mazepin in the Williams was over a second behind George Russell’s times.
This is tough business for a newbie. Mazepin’s sometimes pretty sweet side was evident in a post-race quote in which he said, “If I can have one thing for Christmas, it’s just getting on the same lap as the others.”
F1 cars are incredibly complicated to drive to begin with, and the Haas car is so bad to drive that both Mazepin and Schumacher have their jobs to do. It’s not easy to be fast, so the Haas drivers deserve some compassion for their efforts, but Schumacher may deserve more.
The seven-time world champion’s son even asked on the radio if Mazepin was trying to kill him in a late race during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix that the FIA, oddly enough, didn’t investigate and had to publicly ask for more faces to give way for a tougher penalty . He’s the only driver who is likely far enough behind to fight his teammate and eventually quarrel over an equally bad car.
But Schumacher’s call to drive Mazepin out obviously doesn’t help with the team’s PR issues. It has to do something for Nikita’s image before it swallows a team that was on the verge of ceasing to exist last year. So it’s obvious that PR has come up with a nice way to put Mazepin in a good light. A staged social media video showed how team boss Günther Steiner gave him a spinning top, in memory of his habit of doing it on the track and the (rather mean) fan nickname “Mazespin”.
It’s a socially creative stroke of genius that deserves to be just that. Rehabilitating the image of a driver whose behavior the team had to condemn as “hideous” a week after signing up is an impossible task. And Haas has a duty not only to himself but also to Mazepin to somehow do it.
Anyone who made it up is clever as hell. The stunt was reported in the F1 media, in at least one UK newspaper, spread like wildfire on social media and Reddit, and even we wrote about it. It’s the kind of fluff that rumbles on the internet.
There will be more of them for sure. Haas initiated the turning point in a situation that he must resolve from his own perspective. At the same time, a sweet nothing was done about the initial outcry from Mazepin’s groping video about the FIA or FOM. What was an opportunity to discuss what is acceptable has vanished into the rhythm of the season without a working group, let alone a resolution.
Haas’ problems affect all of sport: it’s too easy not to be competitive, money is still an issue for many teams, stewarding decisions can be worryingly selective, and the risk of high-speed collisions ruins it for everyone. The PR department can only work with what it has, but everyone else can stay in control.
Fans will be able to return en masse to the races this weekend at the Austrian Grand Prix, which is great after such a long time away from the racetracks. Racing should be for everyone, but that’s the only meme that never really gets going.
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The post The Haas F1 team’s PR gets sweet about its nightmare driver Nikita Mazepin first appeared on monter-une-startup.
