Nikita Mazepin lost the qualifying battle against teammate Mick Schumacher for the last time this season ahead of the Season finale in Abu Dhabi. However, he remains hopeful for the race, “It's tough but there are still opportunities to potentially be extracted. The race is always a different challenge, it offers you different opportunities than qualifying and I think on this new track layout, it will be an interesting one. I'm ready to race tonight – I don't want to wait for tomorrow."

MotorLat had access to an online media session where the driver explained the difficulties he´s going through this weekend with the old chassis “it´s been tough, it´s confidence feeling, confirming once again that something I felt at the beginning of the year 21 races passed and the feeling is very much the same. So in that respect, as a human being you always want to make sure that you didn´t give false feedback and obviously I have much experience now in F1 as I´ve ever did so in that respect it was good but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel for the race tomorrow.”

Last weekend, Nikita said he had a meeting with Michael Massi, when asked about it he explained, “We had a meeting and Michael is a really nice open guy to work with. So that was great I wanted to see him in regards to the gentlemen´s agreement but obviously that´s not something he is in charge of.  So, he just said talk with the drivers and then I had a talk with the drivers I don´t think the agreement is…I think everybody said the agreement is not happening anymore. So, no more gentlemen (smiled).  I think everybody is in their own world like F2 and F3 in previous days.”