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Haas F1 team principal Gunther Steiner has said the team will decide drive Nikita Mazepin and sponsor Uralkali’s future next week.
The German team boss added that the team was distressed with the situation in Ukraine. The German team boss revealed that the team is monitoring and evaluating the situation, and will decide the future course of action.
On being asked about Mazepin’s future in the team, Steiner replied:
“It needs to be resolved. Not everything depends from us here what is happening. There's governments involved; I have no power over them, and we also need to see how the situation develops in Ukraine.”
The American-owned team spent most of their testing days in Barcelona addressing the PR nightmare resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. If Mazepin is dropped from the lineup, his replacement from Ferrari junior Robert Schwartzman also happens to be a Russian funded by the SMP bank.
Elaborating the evolving situation at the team, Steiner said the team is considering dropping the Russian sponsor Uralkali. He also said that the team is in the process of reviewing the legal modalities.
“We have to sort out all the legal stuff. We will work through it next week. I'm not going to go through it today; we made the decision yesterday with our team partners that this is what we're going to do. I need to work on the rest next week.”
A sponsor replacement may not be an issue if Haas lines up a different title sponsor. However, their driver lineup remains a concern, depending on how the geopolitical events unfold.
While it's unlikely the Haas F1 team would change their driver lineup, a possible replacement for Mazepin is Antonio Giovinazzi. He is also committed to a Formula E team this season despite being a Ferrari reserve. Hence, Pietro Fittipaldi is being speculated to be the logical choice.
The team ran an all-white livery for the final day of the test in response to the situation. However, the Russian flag colours on their car were heavily criticised. Mazepin did break his silence on the matter on Instagram, condemning the violence.
Haas team boss assures that team's financial situation remains sound
Gunther Steiner addressed the team's financial issues in a media call in Barcelona, saying funding was not a concern. However, the team did not expect the tensions between Russia and Ukraine to escalate to the extent they have, and are monitoring it to make future decisions.
Providing assurances about the financial health of the team, the Haas boss said:
“Financially we are OK. It has no implementation on the team: how we are running it, how we are doing, how we plan the season. There are more ways to get the funding. So there's no issue with that."
"We haven't been planning for this because until it happens... obviously we monitored the situation; we are not sitting there ignorantly waiting for something to happen. When it happens, you need to see how it develops. I've never experienced something like this, so I didn't know how it would go down.”
