Nikita Mazepin says a brake problem led to the spin at the end of Q1 in Bahrain Grand Prix qualifying.
The Haas driver spun twice during the 18-minute session, taking his weekend total so far to at least five, en route to setting comfortably the slowest time.
But his last one in the final moments caused a yellow flag which meant Sebastian Vettel and Esteban Ocon were unable to improve, resulting in their early elimination too.
“I had an issue with brake by wire. I locked up on the rears, I’m not sure why, at Turn 1,” Mazepin explained later via Formula1.com.
the MAZEPIN METHOD™️
1. Jump the entire warm-up lap queue
2. Spin before you even get to the first corner and ruin the laps of all the drivers you just passed
3. ???
4. Profit pic.twitter.com/MZ72weiGwD
— Keaton (@Schennorris) March 27, 2021
“The pedal just went long. We need to look into that. Something that I didn’t really expect and shouldn’t happen. I’ve never had it driving in the test before or free practice and hopefully that won’t happen tomorrow.”
What only made the Russian’s spin more infuriating for Vettel and Ocon was images showing Mazepin passing several cars who were queueing on the run to the final corner, breaching a gentleman’s agreement not to do so.
“Coming into that last corner my team had told me… first of all I was working on trying to sort the brake-by-wire issue because it’s an electrical issue which can be sorted by the steering wheel, which it wasn’t,” he claimed.
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“They said just to try it out. Plus, if you would have noticed, I was held for a long time on the weighbridge, so I lost loads of time.
“My team told me there is not enough time to cross the start/finish line if I don’t go now. So I’m obviously the team’s driver, I’m doing as instructed and the instructions were to push – I pushed. And to be very honest, I’ve never heard about this agreement before, however, I will take notice from now on.”