Haas F1 driver Nikita Mazepin, in his own words

With a few more races under his belt, he has learned that what worked on Friday might not work on Saturday and modern F1 drivers need to be flexible.

“It is very important to trust your own feelings, as much as it is to listen to the hundreds of people around you in Formula 1,” he says. “It’s a very interesting balance, which hopefully I will learn even more about in the next few years. We don’t arrive in F1 direct from karting. We have learned in Formula 2 and in Formula 3 and sometimes you need to go against the normal rules of the people in Formula 1 to achieve truly great results. The normal rule in F1 is that you develop the car all year long – 365 days a year – to be as competitive as you can be. But we are saving some efforts to achieve better results in the longer term.

“Ultimately, no matter how good or bad the car is, you are the one who is driving it, and of course you cannot perform on your own. You are the face of the car and the car’s face is your face so, in this respect, I think it is slightly difficult for a driver to be thrown into a championship where the team decides not to develop the cars and says: ‘It’s a learning year’.

“The most difficult point for me was after Barcelona, because I had a very difficult first four races. Bahrain was my first race and Imola was a track I didn’t know, but then Portimão and especially Barcelona was such a tricky time compared to all of my other F1 outings, including the Force India and Mercedes tests, when I believe I was able to do a decent job. I felt that something wasn’t right.”

It turned out that Mazepin was correct and in Austria Haas team boss Guenther Steiner explained the problem that had been found. “One of the chassis is a little bit heavier. Not in all circumstances – just when we need a certain weight balance. It’s marginal – but it is heavier. And it has an impact. Heavier cannot have no impact.”

The team plans to have a new chassis for him at the Belgian Grand Prix, after the summer break.

Since this discovery was made, Mazepin has seemed less confused. His form and his confidence have improved and at Silverstone he beat Schumacher in a straight fight for the first time.

“I had to push very hard in the beginning to try and get in front because you know that this track is difficult to overtake on,” he said. “I used a lot of my tyres but then I put in probably my best overtake in the last three years.

“I definitely think I am learning a lot of about how F1 works; about how to do things that are not related to racing; and also doing some very valuable laps, starts and so on. But I am just a little bit concerned sometimes not to adapt too much to this car and change my driving style, because next year’s car could be a completely different thing to drive.”

Given that everyone knows that the Haas is not competitive this year, is it fair to say that there is no real pressure on Mazepin, except to beat his team-mate?

“I would say yes and no,” he says. “There is a certain mentality that you as a driver find to drive yourself in your many many years of racing, regardless of the conditions. You push to the maximum. In my case, it is so much a part of me that I can consciously say: ‘Okay, no pressure’ and think logically, but then when you get in the groove and want to improve every corner and try to go faster and do better lap times, you eventually start to look around and look at who has done what. I am quite a competitive person. If you gave me a ping-pong table and said, ‘Let’s play!’, I’d really try to beat you. If you have that, you have it. You cannot go out and buy it. We can only play with what we’ve been given by the character that we are born with.

“I really think every human is capable of achieving certain things that are in their control. I would have exactly the same ambitions if my dad had sent me ballet dancing when I was young. If I had got to the age of 10 and I had spent four years doing it, and I knew that I wanted to be dancing in the best theatres in the world, I would put in exactly the same effort.”

When Nikita was six, his father enrolled him for three sporting activities that he believed would be good for his son to develop: karting, mixed martial arts and gymnastics.

“When I had my nose broken for the first time, my dad wasn’t as keen on cage-fighting,” Mazepin says. “So I stopped that. I have never been super flexible or good at gymnastics. It just wasn’t my thing. But in karting, I had more natural pace than the average kids and so I was drawn into it. It was the thing from the beginning that I happened to be reasonably good at. Now I am 22 and sitting here in the F1 paddock…”

Mazepin is different from many of the Russian racing drivers we have seen in the past, with a more international outlook. When you talk to him, you get the impression that his English is so good that he must have been at school in England.

“I was,” he says. “We have 11 years of schooling in Russia, but for my ninth to 11th years – basically the sixth form - I lived in Oxford and studied at Oxford College. I was driving for Hitech and Force India, and when I wasn’t racing, I had a bike and would cycle off to school in the mornings.”