Haas F1 team term Uralkali contract termination 'a bump in the road'

The Haas F1 team are not overly concerned after having terminated deals with both title sponsor Uralkali and driver Nikita Mazepin.

This is according to team principal Gunther Steiner, who dubbed the recent events surrounding the team ‘a bump in the road’.

“I’m actually not too bad,” Steiner told the media after the announcement was made.

“I’ve been through a few tough things. It was hard work and I had a group of people helping me on this. You cannot do this on your own, but the team out on the racetrack are not affected by this.

“I spoke with them and told them there is nothing to worry for them. Everything is fine. This is a bump in the road, which we didn’t expect and nobody expected or wants.”

Steiner also detailed how the decision was taken quickly, adding that he felt the team did the right thing.

“I think, as a team, we took the right decision at this moment in time to send a message to everybody. I went straight to talk with Gene (Haas, team owner) about it.

“Then we got in contact with our partners and we made a decision. As you saw, we reacted very quickly to it. So you can imagine it was very straight talk. Obviously, you need to keep the people involved.

“The headquarters of Haas Automation is in California, they are nine hours behind, so I had to wait until I could get in touch with the boss of Haas Automation as well to talk it through, because they are the biggest partner on our car.

“We acted quickly. We are a small team, which is sometimes good [as] we have direct lines of communication, and we just executed them.”

Why did it come to this for the Haas F1 team?

There was always going to be issues for Haas’ Russian sponsors Uralkali once Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began.

Not only that, but the simple fact of the matter is that Dimitry Mazepin – son of former Haas driver Nikita and Uralkali’s supremo – is close to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Also read: Nikita Mazepin out of Haas as team ends title sponsorship with Uralkali

Then there’s the small matter of sanctions being placed on the travel of Russian citizens. This would have reportedly made Mazepin’s inclusion in a number of Formula 1 races quite the task.

Thus, once the decision was made to cut ties with Uralkali, it only made sense that Mazepin’s driver contract was also terminated.

Who Haas choose as a replacement driver remains to be seen.