The Haas F1 Team has confirmed that Nikita Mazepin will be racing with them in Formula One next season despite the Russian racing driver groping an Instagram model in Dubai earlier this month.
In a statement released on Wednesday, Haas said “the matter has now been dealt with internally” and added that they won’t be making any further comment on the issue:
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“Haas F1 Team would like to reaffirm that Nikita Mazepin and Mick Schumacher will form its driver lineup for the 2021 FIA Formula 1 World Championship.
“As per the team’s previous statement regarding the actions of Nikita Mazepin (9 December) – this matter has now been dealt with internally and no further comment shall be made.”
Earlier, Haas team principal Guenther Steiner said they are taking the incident “very seriously” and insisted that he can remain objective when discipling Nikita Mazepin over his conduct.
“We take it very seriously, as you saw with what we sent out [in their team statement].
“I just want to reinforce that, that we will deal with it. I’m not going into detail on what we’ll do and how we’ll do it, but we take it seriously, and we will work to sort this out, what happened.
“We had a race weekend going on, as you know, so I didn’t focus on that one.
“That will be job for the coming week, when I’m back in the office at home. So I’m travelling, and then we will deal with that.
“But we spoke up until the race weekend started, and I said there’s no point that we do anything now because there is a focus, which needs to be kept.
“I can make an objective assessment, obviously.
“But as I said, I will deal with that the coming week. Maybe you guys will never know what was dealt with, and what are the circumstances, because I will keep them private,” Steiner concluded.
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