Nikita Mazepin has criticised Haas team-mate Mick Schumacher after a messy end to qualifying at Formula 1’s Dutch Grand Prix.
Schumacher and Mazepin were touring through the final sector in Q1 when the Russian got in the way of Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel.
Neither Schumacher nor Mazepin made it through to Q2 but while that was little surprise, given the limitations of Haas’ VF-21, Mazepin was angered by his team-mate’s alleged tactics.
“Well I’m really annoyed to be honest because it should have not been that difficult with traffic,” he said.
“Because as [the] rules [are] within a Formula 1 team one weekend you are the first car [on track], the next weekend you are the second car.
“This weekend was my turn to be the first car and I’ve once, in Imola, overtaken the first car when I was the second [car] and I got a bollocking from the team.
“And now this has happened to me the second time, my team-mate overtakes me and bumps me into the traffic and f***s my last attempt in qualifying, on purpose, so I’m not happy.
“If you do it once and he didn’t know about it fine, but twice that’s deliberate, and I don’t like it when there’s tension, it shouldn’t be like that.”
Schumacher, though, played down the row and said he received the all-clear from the team to pass Mazepin on their respective out laps.
“My tyres were cooling down, I wanted to do a faster out lap, that case Nikita was doing a slow out lap so I requested to overtake and I got the okay to do so, early enough,” he said.
“We had Lando [Norris] between us, so I don’t really understand the confusion that happened in the last corner.”
