Guenther Steiner and his Haas F1 Team played a strange joke on Nikita Mazespin by presenting him with a spinning to highlight his on-track antics that regularly end in spins.
Maze-spin has a website that records his on-track indiscretions in his Formula 1 rookie season hampered by having to race the worst car on the grid, one that last year’s veteran drivers – Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen – labelled: evil.
During the Styrian Grand Prix weekend, Steiner found it funny to present the Russian youngster the ‘gift’ for their social media channels, saying in it: “There is a little present for you so you can keep on Mazespinning… So now you spin this one, it’s better than spinning the car!”
Later Steiner was asked by reporters to explain the tasteless gift to Mazepin, he explained: “I think he got used to social media storms!
“He was on the wrong side at some stages, and in the end, social media can be good or bad to you. It was an idea in the team to do this to him and then we did it.
“It was decided to be a little bit funny. We can also be funny here – everything on social media about Nikita is about bad things so there can also be good things, try to use it to your advantage and get away from the naysayers.
“He was not uncomfortable, he was pretty happy. You know there is a happy Nikita Mazepin as well. He’s not this unhappy kid you all think he is, this miserable young man, he’s got a good sense of humour,” insisted Steiner.
Indeed Mazepin, at first bewildered, broke into a guffaw when the penny dropped. Thankfully his sense of humour kicked in, when he could have bounced back at Steiner with: “If you did not give me such a shit car maybe my teammate and I would not be risking our lives every time we hop into it?”
While Mazepin has done himself no favours for his vulgar social media antics that rendered him F1’s Most Hated from day one of his career in the top flight, he does bring – through his billionaire father’s Uralakli company – a huge chunk of money to the beleaguered American team so that they can survive.
In the light of that, Steiner condoning the silly prank is the mindset of someone who is out of touch with the reality of his driver, no matter how gracious he was in accepting the ‘gift’ it was cruel one to fling at Mazepin under the circumstances.
Furthermore, antics such as these simply adding ammo for those who believe Steiner is simply the current F1 Village Idiot left to his own devices by Gene Haas, destroying the potential of an American team in the process.