Mazepin lashes out at Schumacher after Q1 incident

Nikita Mazepin was thoroughly upset with Haas teammate Mick Schumacher after Saturday's qualifying at Zandvoort, insisting the German had deliberately ignored the pair's pre-planned running order in Q1, to the detriment of Sebastian Vettel.

The Aston Martin driver was on a flyer in qualifying when he stumbled upon a group of slow cars on his approach to Turn 13. Vettel dodged past the first two cars but had to take avoiding action to steer clear of Schumacher and Mazepin.

After the session, the furious Russian said that his teammate had overtaken him, contrary to the team's running plan, only to dangerously back him into Vettel at the final corner.

The incident was put to the scrutiny of the stewards who ultimately let both Haas drivers off the hook, thanks in large part to Vettel himself who admitted that there had simply been "too many cars in one place" when he approached the corner.

But Mazepin was livid over Schumacher's decision not to respect the running order.

"I’m really annoyed to be honest," said the Russian. "How the rules in a Formula 1 team works, one weekend you’re the first car, next weekend you’re the second car. This weekend it was my turn to be the first car.

"I once in Imola overtook the first car when I was the second car and I got a bollocking from the team.

"And now this has happened to me for the second time where my team mate overtakes me and then bumps me into the traffic and then fucks up my last attempt in qualifying on purpose.

"So I’m not happy because if you do it once and you didn’t know about it, that's fine, but when you do it twice, that’s deliberate… There shouldn’t be any tension like that in the team, so I’m sort of fucked off."

Asked to comment on the incident, Schumacher said that he been given the go ahead by his team to overtake Mazepin.

"I don’t know what Nikita is saying, I think at the end his crew didn’t give him the message," said the Haas driver.

"I asked if I could overtake because my tyres were quite cold and he usually does a lap that is a bit slower than mine and I got the okay from the team and overtook accordingly.

"I think Lando [Norris] was between us and I don’t see a reason to make drama out of it, his lap didn‘t get ruined.

"We will discuss this internally and Guenther [Steiner, team principal] will also say something. In my opinion, on our side, we didn‘t do anything wrong."

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At the end of the day, Vettel lost out big time due the confusion, the Aston Martin driver clocking in just P17 in the session while Schumacher and Mazepin are set to bookend Sunday's grid.

But the four-time world champion admitted that - his run-in with the Haas driver notwithstanding -  his AMR21 has simply not been quick enough in the session.

"At that stage not much I can do, but overall we didn’t have the pace, I think when we were on track we were not quick enough," he told Sky F1.

"For sure we could have timed the last run a bit better, but overall obviously disappointing. In the practice sessions it looked okay but we didn’t make a step in the afternoon."

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