Haas F1 rookie Nikita Mazepin has been again involved another incident. This time he made an unwanted move against F1 veteran Kimi Raikkonen during qualifying session of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

During the qualifying in Baku, Mazepin heavily slowed down on his outlap before a turn but overlooked the approaching Raikkonen in the Alfa Romeo.

The Finn exploded afterwards on the pit radio: “That damn idiot! He tried to push me into the wall.”

The Russian youngster had frequently spun and crashed at the first four races of his Formula 1 career. He has so far shown improvement in this respect on the tight street circuits in Monaco and Baku.

Mazepin believed Q2 was in reach

Mazepin thought an opportunity of reaching Q2 spoiled following the crash of Lance Stroll and Antonio Giovinazzi.

“I was disappointed because where we are with the team this year, the best we can hope for in qualifying is Q2,” he explained.

“I saw there were some cars that didn’t manage to set a lap and I was six tenths up on my fastest lap going into the last corner and locked up, which is probably coming from trying a bit too hard and I wanted a bit too much.

“This is what happens when you have a very small margin to play with and I was just annoyed that I didn’t do a normal job because that should have been enough for me to be happy but it wasn’t.”

Asked if he felt Q2 was achievable, he replied: “Looking at the final times, no, but in the session, I thought so.”

It’s been a difficult qualifying with all the stoppages – Kimi

“We did a good laptime even though we only had used tyres left after all the red flags in Q1, and we could have got even more without the red flag at the end of Q2. We were on a good lap and we would have had a tow, and I think we could have gone through to Q3.”

“It’s been a difficult qualifying with all the stoppages, but let’s see what we can do: we seemed to be faster and faster with every lap, the car felt better than at any other point in the weekend so it feels we are going in the right direction. Of course there are still things we need to improve but the feeling in qualifying is getting better. Tomorrow anything can happen: we need to stay out of any issue at the start and see what we can get out of this race.”