zzdcar
Home
/
Reviews
/
Racing
/
Driver Who Wrecked Teammate, Drove With Phone in His Hand Stays in Haas F1 Program
Driver Who Wrecked Teammate, Drove With Phone in His Hand Stays in Haas F1 Program-May 2024
2024-02-19 EST 22:11:13

Again reminding us that not everyone has consequences for their actions, the Haas team said it’s keeping —the Santino Ferrucci penalized for and wrecking a teammate on the same weekend—in its F1 development program.

That’s right. A person penalized and after holding a phone in his hand while driving a race car is still in the F1 development pipeline. Watch out, , looks like that one is texting!

Ferrucci has , and the team in March that he’d stay in it this year while also running Formula 2 races with a team called Trident Motorsport. The ugliness that seems to have been brewing in his relationship with that team peaked at Silverstone Circuit in the UK in July, when the series penalized him for the phone incident and for hitting his own teammate, Arjun Maini, on a cool-down lap. Series-issued penalties included a disqualification and a four-race ban from Formula 2, and Trident Motorsport announced about a week after it all happened that the team had dropped him.

Trident Motorsport about Ferrucci’s Silverstone weekend that seemed to leave out some details about it, apologizing to Maini for the “unsportsmanlike and above all uncivilized behavior that he was forced to endure not only during this last weekend by Santino Ferrucci and [his] father.”

The team also claimed in that it had problems with Ferrucci not paying to race:

Since the beginning of the championship, the Driver justified its payments’ default with alleged failure by his sponsors to fulfil their obligations. It seems weird that, despite such kind of issues, Santino Ferrucci had the resources needed to enter the Detroit INDY race from June 1st to 3rd while, at the same time, he was not honouring his agreement with Trident Motorsport.

Trident gave mandate to its lawyers in order to activate all the procedures needed to fully recover its credits towards the driver.

Ferrucci tweeted an apology later, saying he used “extremely poor judgement” and hit Maini accidentally. He said there was no premeditation, “only anger and frustration as this has been a horrific year,” and that there was no excuse for his “mental lapse” other than “the fact that [he’s] a twenty-year-old Italian American with a deep passion for motorsport, which is a very emotional sport.”

As it all unfolded in mid July, Haas F1 told Jalopnik via a statement from team principal Guenther Steiner that the team wanted to gather “all of the facts” around the situation before making a decision on Ferrucci’s place in its development program. On Thursday, reported that Steiner said the team’s keeping him around for now. From the story:

Speaking ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix, Haas team principal Gunther Steiner said: “I think we keep him for the time being on the programme.

“We will see what he is going to do in IndyCar and stay with that one.

“The guy is trying to make a career and in the end we don’t want to pull the rug under his feet.”

Ferrucci also got a pass on his behavior from IndyCar team Dale Coyne Racing, which is what Steiner mentioned above. The team announced that he’ll be in one of its cars , with team owner Dale Coyne saying the team was “very impressed with Santino” when he ran the Detroit Grand Prix earlier this year—“not just by his performance behind the wheel, but also by his professionalism and maturity outside of the race car.”

Speaking of outside of the race car, maybe that’s where he’ll leave his phone and his misplaced anger from now on.

Comments
Welcome to zzdcar comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
Racing
The Ultimate Drift Corolla Is Still One Of The Best Rally Cars Around
The Ultimate Drift Corolla Is Still One Of The Best Rally Cars Around
It’s 8/6 day in the rest of the world, and I’m sure you (like me) are spending most of it watching old drift videos. But the most iconic drift car of a generation is still one of the best old rally cars you can run. I watched the other weekend...
May 22, 2026
Formula One In Talks With Saudi Arabia To Host A Race As Early As 2021
Formula One In Talks With Saudi Arabia To Host A Race As Early As 2021
It looks like might potentially have a new Grand Prix venue sometime soon. has been added to the lineup of prospective countries keen to host a race as early as 2021—and teams have already been asked for their opinion on the matter. I can’t say that it’s a totally...
May 22, 2026
Here's Why There's 4,000 Pounds Of Manure Stacked On This Racecar
Here's Why There's 4,000 Pounds Of Manure Stacked On This Racecar
Almost 20 years ago, an ingenious racing team bought thousands of pounds of top soil and manure to calibrate the downforce of its race car. Last week, a tweet featuring a photo of a champ car with dozens of bags of manure stacked on top went viral on Twitter....
May 22, 2026
The Best View Of Stadium Super Trucks Is Only For Fans With Strong Stomachs
The Best View Of Stadium Super Trucks Is Only For Fans With Strong Stomachs
Thanks to somebody’s clever camera placement, now we know what the view is like for some of the hardest-working suspension in motorsports. , which seems to be everybody’s favorite warm-up race series these days, basically features a bunch of pickup truck-looking vehicles bounding over huge jumps that are set up...
May 22, 2026
Here's How Hybrid Technology in Formula One Has Evolved Since 2007
Here's How Hybrid Technology in Formula One Has Evolved Since 2007
Formula One has spent the last ten years pushing the boundaries of hybrid technology to make their cars faster and more efficient. Sure, we know that tech has pretty rapidly evolved—but what does that actually look like? You can count on the Mercedes F1 team to show you how it’s...
May 22, 2026
Do It, Lamborghini. Enter Le Mans In The Hypercar Class
Do It, Lamborghini. Enter Le Mans In The Hypercar Class
While plenty of manufacturers race in each year, not all of them go out of their way to design and produce a purpose-built racer for the series’ top class—the hypercar class in 2020/2021. has been one of those manufacturers. Except, it sounds like that might be changing. Lamborghini CEO—and...
May 22, 2026
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.zzdcar.com All Rights Reserved