Nikita Mazepin and Lewis Hamilton all shared their thoughts on the impeding incident in FP3 of the F1 Saudi Arabian GP.
As the third free practice session of the weekend took place, so did a number of episodes for title contender Mercedes’ Hamilton in F1 Saudi Arabian GP. Ignoring yellow flags, impeding AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly and then the hair raising impeding of Haas’ Mazepin left Hamilton facing stewards action after the session.
Luckily for him, you could say he got away with it having only received a reprimand and a fine. But it was the impeding of Mazepin that drew the most attention for a number of reasons. It was in one of the most high speed sections of the track on a blind corner with little escape route, if it wasn’t for the incredible reactions of Mazepin, this could have been an airplane crash.
“I was on a fast lap and I was going through turns 7 and 8 which are flat in our car, they are all blind and I didn’t know there was a car on the racing line so I kept it flat until the moment I saw he wasn’t going to move from it and not a big deal from my side,” said Mazepin to media including FormulaRapida.net.
“We train to have the reactions necessary to avoid these kind of situations and Lewis has been very nice and we’ve sent each other texts about that and yeah just hoped that he had a good qualifying and he did as always so yeah that’s the main thing,” summed up Mazepin, who then went to add on about the message from Hamilton.
“He felt very sorry for what happened, and he said it wasn’t the best job done from their side,” said Mazepin. “It’s really nice to see the experienced and older generation really paying attention to these things. In F2 you might never get a driver thinking about it, where in F1, the seven-time world champion is. So that’s really kind from him.”
Hamilton displayed the sometimes underrated aspect to his game which is his sportsmanlike behaviour by exchanging texts with Mazepin after the incident to apologise. As the Russian alludes to, its good to see the Brit taking this into account when he could have just brushed it off given the Russian is no rival of his.
The two drivers do get along well, they’ve been pictured in the paddock a number of times together, so the respect is clearly there. Watching the incident back, it could potentially take anyone’s breath away. It could have been so much worse and perhaps exposed some of the flaws of the Jeddah street circuit with a number of drivers including Mazepin’s teammate Mick Schumacher alluding to the lack of visibility for what’s coming up behind you.
“Instantly you have 1 or 2 swear words come out because we really put everything on the line for that lap and then it doesn’t come along,” said Mazepin. “But I’ve had a lot of experience in this and here you don’t have a chance to rely on your mirrors, you rely on your engineers and your engineers are not a robot, they are a human and he has so many jobs to do as well as telling you where you are on track and sometimes he doesn’t tell you in the right moment that somebody is coming at a speed of 250 kph so the people as engineers really don’t deserve the criticism for it and in my case I was always happy to take the blame.”
As mentioned before, respect between these two drivers is thankfully present. With Hamilton not being awarded a penalty this could have stirred up anger and frustration with other drivers but given the two completely different situations and seasons of the Russian and the Brit, Mazepin knows this isn’t his battle to follow up.
“I really like Lewis, and I really wish him all the best that I can in his title fight,” said Mazepin. “I wouldn’t want him to be penalised for something that was together with me. I’m in my first year in Formula 1. He was probably focusing on his steering wheel adjusters and thinking how to find a bit of lap time for qualifying. If the cost was for me not to complete one of my laps in FP3, so be it.”
It was a very peaceful and dignified response to such an instance from Mazepin who at times this season has displayed inexperience and maturity. The way he’s handled this is something he can be proud of. Hamilton expressed similar feelings on how the track impacted the incident when he was asked.
“With Nikita, basically, I was told that he was 10s behind starting the lap and it’s such a difficult track, you have to get the feedback all the way down to when they’re four seconds behind or something like that, three seconds, so when to get out of the way and there was radio silence,” said Hamilton. “I had no idea where he was and yeah, next thing I know he’s right behind me so.
“In the drivers’ briefing, I did say that I think there was a potential for this so we should probably keep a minimum speed everywhere, like they did for the 22-27 I think it was but they only did it for 22 to 27 so I apologised to Nikita. And then yeah, with the yellow flags there was a white panel going through nine but there was no yellows, I didn’t have any yellows. There was no car stopped anywhere so,” summed up Hamilton.
Hamilton was lucky to escape without penalty for this, among other incidents in that FP3 session as how the race panned out, it would have been tricky for him. Mazepin did a great job to avoid what would have been a very nasty crash. The incident definitely exposed a major flaw in the track which maybe for the future will be rectified.
Here’s what happened between Nikita Mazepin and Lewis Hamilton: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/video.2021-saudi-arabian-gp-fp3-hamilton-blocks-flying-mazepin-and-gasly.1718229814284891311.html
The story was written by Ollie Pattas
Here’s all what was said by Mercedes and Red Bull duo plus FIA
Here’s Mick Schumacher, Nikita Mazepin on the race incident
