Haas Team Principal Guenther Steiner has confirmed that rookie teammates Nikita Mazepin and Mick Schumacher have made up following a final lap incident at the Azerbaijan GP.
Despite the fact that the team came away with their best finish of the season, Schumacher was left raging after Mazepin appeared to prevent Schumacher from making an overtake on the main straight.
The pair were running in 15th and 16th at the race restart and were promoted after Hamilton accidentally switched his brakes off coming into Turn One – and then were further lifted up the order after Williams’ Nicholas Latifi was handed a 30-second penalty.
But as Schumacher gained enough momentum to make the overtake for the higher position, Mazepin appeared to jink the car sideways momentarily, in a move that could have ended in tears.
Mick jumped on the team radio after gesturing furiously to his teammate from the cockpit and said, “What the f*** was that? Honestly. Seriously. Does he want to kill us? Wow.”
After the race, Mazepin seemed to refer to the incident and said; “The main thing is I’m just a little bit upset about losing my position to my teammate on the main straight.
“It is what it is, but I think our finishing position is a nice number for the team, but obviously some unexpected situations happened with the other drivers which enabled us to get that position.
“Overall, it’s quite positive.”
In true Schumacher style, Mick was more subtle in his comments after the race and said;
“I think it was difficult for everyone.
“Tyre degradation seemed higher out there than we expected. We came in for an extra pit stop to go on the C5 and it felt good but then the session was red-flagged.
“It was definitely not easy but we were close to the points and these are the kind of races that we have to use to our advantage and stay in the race.
“We managed to do that, we were fighting and you see a little light at the end of the tunnel.”
Since then, however, Steiner admitted the incident had been dealt with privately and everyone had made up after the race.
“Obviously it was an exciting race today, on one way or another, or even in all ways”, he said.
“In the end we had our best result of the year, which I’m very happy about for everybody. For where we are at the moment it’s very difficult to get this result.
“Everybody worked really hard and just due to that – it happened. Obviously, there was a situation on the straight, that was all resolved, and we’ve cleared the air.
“There was some misunderstanding, but we’re fine and all moving on from it.”
