Schumacher wants ‘consequences’ for Mazepin after latest F1 clash

Rookie duo Schumacher and Mazepin had a near-miss during the opening stages of Sunday’s race at Zandvoort when Mazepin moved across late on Schumacher at the start of the second lap.

Schumacher was forced to back out of the attempted pass following the block but appeared to clip the rear of his teammate’s car, before pitting soon after for a front wing change after picking up damage.

The latest flashpoint of their intra-team rivalry occurred a day after Mazepin accused Schumacher of breaking an internal team protocol by overtaking him at the beginning of their final runs in qualifying.

"It just seems like he’s got this thing in his head where he wants to, at any cost, be in front of me, and that’s ok,” Schumacher told Sky Sports.

“I have nothing against it but if we get to the point where we defend very aggressively against a teammate where you have nothing to gain is not the right approach.

“It doesn’t justify the fact that he pushes me in the wall and pushes me to go into the pitlane. I think that’s not the right way. We’ll probably have to have a talk with the team about it.”

Although Schumacher indicated his relationship with Mazepin may be beyond repair when speaking to Sky, he later added that he hopes the situation can be resolved.

“I think I’m not the only driver he did that to today,” he said. “So I’m sure that a few people will have a look at it, and hopefully, consequences will come into play in the future.

“We didn’t chat much today but I think that from his point of view, I think you saw what he still thinks about it and about the whole situation, I think otherwise he doesn’t react the way he did in this race.

“This is quite new to me. I feel like normally if you talk about it, you have a certain respect then. I feel that it’s quite difficult to find that at the moment for some reason, I don’t really understand. But that hopefully we’ll manage to solve it.”

Haas team principal Guenther Steiner believes no one was to blame for the incident, though he said discussions will be held with both drivers before this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

“I would say there is not one to be blamed on this,” Steiner said. “We need to work on it, be constructive.

“We had a meeting after our engineering debrief about it. We haven’t come to a conclusion. The plan is to meet before Monza and to see what we need to do to avoid this in future because it doesn’t help anybody, I tried to explain that one. So we will work on it and we will work on it until we get it sorted.”

Steiner suggested Haas will not hesitate to introduce rules of engagement for its drivers if the matter cannot be resolved.

“It’s not easy to bang their heads together, but you have to come to some conclusions,” he added. “Otherwise, we need to put rules in place.”