Haas chief Guenther Steiner has shed more light on the decision to sack driver Nikita Mazepin just two weeks before the start of the new season.
The team had planned to race with Mazepin and Mick Schumacher for a second successive season, but all that changed when Russia invaded Ukraine. Suddenly, there was huge pressure on Haas to take action over both the driver and sponsor Uralkali.
Dmitry Mazepin, who owns that company and paid for his son's seat with the team, has close ties to Vladimir Putin. As well as fan demands, team owner Gene Haas revealed that there had also been pressure from other sponsors to act.
So both deals were ended and, just a few days later, the European Union named them both individually as targets of their latest round of sanctions. Bans on competing in certain countries and potential issues with visas and travel would also have contributed to the issue of keeping Mazepin on as a driver.
That is why, in the end, the action was taken that led to Kevin Magnussen coming in with just 10 days' notice. Shedding more light onto the situation, Steiner has admitted that Haas had no choice other than to act.
"We couldn't make any other decision when we got to it, there was no possibility to keep him driving," he said in Bahrain. "The criticism, the sanction, altogether, it didn't work out any more."
Mazepin reacted angrily to being let go by the team. Just days after he learned that his Formula 1 career was over after just one season, the Russian held a self-organised press conference in which he claimed he had not been told in advance that he was being let go.
"Guenther gave me no information about what decision the team is going to take, aside from the information that he has been giving my manager up to March 4," he said. "And then the press release came, I read it and found out that my contract had been terminated. But I did not speak to him personally."
Meanwhile, Mazepin's replacement got off to a dream start in his latest spell in F1. Magnussen reached the final round of qualifying and will start Sunday's race in seventh, ahead of Mercedes new boy George Russell. Schumacher also enjoyed better fortunes than he did last year, qualifying a respectable 12th – his best Saturday result in the sport to date.
