Haas Formula 1 drivers Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin have escaped sanction for an alleged impeding of Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel in Dutch GP qualifying, despite the stewards admitting Vettel was indeed “compromised”.
Vettel was on his final flying lap in Q1 when he came upon the Haas duo, who were having something of an eventful out-lap.
With the blessing of his race engineer, Schumacher had overtaken Mazepin earlier in the lap, leaving the Russian befuddled and creating the circumstances for Mazepin’s somewhat half-hearted attempt to retake track position from Schumacher entering the penultimate corner, Kumho.
That was exactly when Vettel approached the pair, and he had to take avoiding action as a result, effectively writing off his lap.
The stewards summoned all three drivers along with team representatives for a hearing, and “reviewed video, radio calls to the drivers and positioning/marshalling system data”.
“There is no doubt that the lap of Car 5 [Vettel] was compromised. However, we note in particular the comment of the driver of car 5 that ‘there were too many cars in the one place’,” the stewards’ verdict read.
“There were at least six cars in line, preparing for a fast lap, and all of these were travelling at slow speed (some at less than 50 km/h) whereas Car 5 was approaching at up to 240km/h.
“Although Car 5 was impeded, in this circumstances this was not ‘unnecessary impeding’. The drivers and team representatives present agreed.”
Indeed, Vettel’s comments immediately after the session had suggested that he was less concerned by the actions of the Haas drivers than by the general abundance of traffic in that part of the circuit at the time.
“It was a mess,” he said. “There’s nobody to blame it’s just a lot of cars that cannot manage, it’s obviously not ideal but it is what it is.”
While Vettel’s final Q1 lap was a write-off, the Haas-induced hold-up likely didn’t play a pivotal role, given that in two first sectors of the lap in question he was already three tenths down in each on the Q2 cut-off time Lando Norris would go on to set.
“We went not much faster than in practice,” he admitted. “It should’ve been a decent step.”
Vettel is due to start tomorrow’s race from 17th, joined on row nine by Alfa Romeo stand-in Robert Kubica, with the two Haas drivers on the final row behind.
