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Nikita Mazepin’s rookie Formula 1 season couldn’t have gone much worse. Even before it started, he had disgraced himself with his behaviour in a video posted on social media and escaped meaningful sanction. He then crashed out at the third corner of his debut grand prix in Bahrain at the start of a campaign during which he was comfortably outperformed by team-mate Mick Schumacher.
During 2021, he was most conspicuous when he was kicking off about perceived preferential treatment for Mick Schumacher or complaining about his chassis struggles. Certainly, that attracted far more attention than his performances, which were unimpressive.
But a 22-race season (or 21 in Mazepin’s case as he tested positive for COVID-19 and skipped the Abu Dhabi GP) in a back-of-the-grid car is testing for anyone. He cites his poor 2019 Formula 2 season, during which he struggled and complained that ART Grand Prix was too one-dimensional set-up wise and focused on team-mate (and title-winner) Nyck de Vries, as key to giving him the experience and fortitude to stick with it.
That was also a year that didn’t go well, with the nadir coming on the first lap of the sprint race at Sochi. There, he took to the runoff at Turn 2 on the opening lap but in not taking the marked runoff chicane properly, he made contact with Jack Aitken and fired himself across the track into the wall, taking Nobuharu Matsushita with him.
Both Nobuharu Matsushita and Nikita Mazepin are being transferred to hospital. Neither driver suffered fractures as a result of the Lap 1 incident pic.twitter.com/H7ZXfW3JeE
— Formula 2 (@Formula2) September 29, 2019
Mazepin specifically references the period after that as being a difficult one that helped to fortify him for a season of struggle in 2021.
“There’s definitely the possibility to improve, and improve a lot,” Mazepin tells The Race. “This is the best level that I’ve ever had an opportunity at and I’m fortunate that I had a very difficult time in 2019.
“I had really been in a dark place mentally, especially at the end of the season in between Sochi and Abu Dhabi when I raced in F2. But if not [for that experience] I don’t think I would have probably continued driving after what I’ve gone through this year.”
Two years on, 2021 was a season that started badly, and while it did improve a little it never got to an adequate level in terms of Mazepin’s driving even considering the uncompetitive machinery. In The Race’s driver ratings, he averaged three out of 10.
We KNOW how much you all love to agree with our driver ratings over the course of a season.
So here we go, for one more time in 2021. Driver ratings from every single race this year, all added up and animated by @f1visualized. You are welcome. pic.twitter.com/lOMYEvPXOB
— The Race (@wearetherace) December 15, 2021
There were hints of improvement that never quite bore fruit, moments where a positive trend flashed into existence then faded. That wasn’t just in the two standout moments in races – his passes on Schumacher at Silverstone and Interlagos – but also with underlying speed.
But overall, the impression made in the early stages of the season with his Bahrain crash, messy Imola weekend and several penalties – albeit not all of them entirely merited, particularly the one for impeding in Spain qualifying that was a consequence of being in a queue of slower cars – was a negative one.
“The first part of the year was hard because I got a few penalties where I haven’t done anything,” says Mazepin. “I would say Bahrain and three rounds after was a very difficult part of my life, but with everything I have done from being in difficult times I was able to get up and keep moving and able to go away from the track and still have a smile on my face.
“And it was a real one, which is a big achievement because that’s not always been possible in my life and I’ve been in some very dark places deep inside, like in 2019 where you do very well in F3 and then you move into F2 and then in year one, things go very s***. So I was kind of prepared for it.
“You can’t prepare for it truly by reading about it or somebody telling you, but it’s about you experiencing it and we’ve been down and recovered and been down a few times this year and I’m proud that every time we got up.
“I’m also very fortunate that everybody, including my mechanics and engineers, wants to do well and I can only imagine how hard it is working through the night when the freight turns up late [in Brazil].
“To know you are going out there to be P19, at the ultimate best and then do it, not for 10 races, not for 20, but to do 22 and nobody has given up. Therefore, I never had a choice to do so as well.”
While Mazepin didn’t set the world on fire during his junior career, he wasn’t a no-hoper. He was assisted by first-class machinery and plenty of private testing, but even so finishing second in Formula 3 with four wins and fifth in Formula 2 with two victories – both in feature races – proved there’s some ability there even though his first seasons at those levels were poor.
On top of that, he also had plenty of F1 mileage stretching all the way back to 2016 when he first tested for Force India. That meant he had 12 ‘official’ test days under his belt before the first race of the season, as well as a significant number of days of private running with Mercedes in what Toto Wolff described as an “extensive testing programme”.
But put it to Mazepin that his first season was disappointing given the preparation he had and the solid, if unspectacular, form in the junior categories and he disagrees.
“I certainly don’t feel disappointed,” he tells The Race. “I’ve probably been exposed to driving good, well-balanced cars and most of my life I have been driving something that is very close to a good, balanced car. That’s what my driving style has evolved into and it comes as no surprise that this car, at most times, is not very balanced to say the least.
“So I’m not great at driving bad cars and that has been something that I was aware of. If you look at 2019, the Barcelona test with Mercedes, I was just over two-tenths slower than Valtteri [Bottas]. When you drive a car that gives you the confidence that you need, I can be there straight away.
“It’s my job to figure out why I cannot be there and extract the most out of every single car because that’s what they say [Fernando] Alonso is the master of. You can give him a lawnmower and he’d be the fastest driver in that possible vehicle and this is unfortunately my weakest point. But I can only believe and hope that I’m 22 years of age and I will have more goes at it to try and improve it.”
It can be unusual to hear Mazepin directly addressing, or even admitting to, a significant weakness. Much of his season has been finding ways to explain his struggles and it has often appeared that he’s more interested in excuses than progress.
But there have been other signs of the self-awareness needed to improve, for example at Interlagos where he did look to have Schumacher-threatening – perhaps even beating – pace in qualifying before his final qualifying lap got away with him, he said over the radio “why do I try too f****** hard when I don’t have to?”. That’s the kind of mindset that will allow him to improve.
A big problem for Mazepin during 2021 was confidence in the rear-end in the high-speed corners. He chipped away at that over the season and the switch to a brand-new chassis after the August shutdown did seem to help him after struggling first with one that gave him no confidence and then one that was overweight, with several weekends where his underlying pace seemed stronger even though he failed to execute qualifying as well as he should.
“My truthful feeling is that I don’t feel the car is under me,” says Mazepin. “One of my strengths is evaluating where the balance is, where the limit is, not overstepping it because if you look on the other side of the garage, I don’t think I cost the team nearly double of what other people have [in crash damage].
“It may sound funny. I can spin but there’s always a reason why that spin never goes into a heavy crash – or very rarely. I had a big one in Bahrain and I wound it down after that because there’s a lot of pressure in this sport and the easiest thing you can do is brake less or lift less. That’s something we’ve been taught since we’re five.
“But the issue is that a) you cost the team money and b) you don’t know the car is not going to hold, so you need to drive with your own head on your shoulders. In the high-speed corners, that is the limit of the downforce and balance that you have.
“I’m a big believer in working closely with the engineer and fine-tuning the cars because the times that we did have that great balance, my times were great. Unfortunately more times we haven’t managed to do it, but as people always compare me to my team-mate, I don’t think it has always been a fair comparison because if your car is heavier you need more downforce to carry the same speed in corners if the car has more weight. It’s just physics.
“I really, really wanted to nail Formula 1 from year one because that was my weak point in other series. But it didn’t happen and I have full confidence that’s what’s coming in the future.”
While it has been difficult to see the signs of progress that are there, his reputation for constantly going off was exaggerated. Yes, there were a number of spins but he’s right in saying Schumacher was the Haas driver who had more costly crashes – twice missing qualifying as a result. It’s also worth noting that Mazepin’s Saudi Arabia crash was down to circumstances and was exactly the kind of accident everybody expected to happen.
The big problem for Mazepin is that his pace was poor and even when it did show signs of improving, it wasn’t produced in the key moments. With Haas expected at least to be more competitive in 2022 and having every chance at least of being in the midfield, he needs to take a clear and decisive step forwards in terms of speed. And to do that, he needs to ensure that his focus is indeed on self-improvement and not finding excuses.
As Schumacher showed alongside him, it was still possible for a rookie to make a good impression during 2021 in Haas machinery. What will decide whether Mazepin gets to an improved level this year will lie in his own approach as that is the key for any driver aiming to perform at this level where track time is limited and the pressure is relentless. But there were at least enough glimpses of an upside in 2021 to expect an improved second season from Mazepin.
