Haas Formula 1 boss Guenther Steiner says the team is taking Nikita Mazepin’ဣs recent video incident “seriously”.

Earlier this week a video emerged on Mazepin’s Instagram story that showed him groping a woman’s breast in the back of a car before it was hastily deleted.🌊 Despite this, it 🐼resurfaced across social media as it was widely shared online.

Haas described the actions of its recently-signed 2021 driver as “abh𓆏orrent”, with the Russian himself later issuing an apology in a statement, while the woman involved insisted that she had uploaded the video to Mazepin’s account as an “internal joke” and defended his behaviour.

F1 and governing body the FIA issued a joint-statement on Thursday supporti🀅ng the Haas team, who have announced that it is dealing with the matter internally.

Speakiꦗng at the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Haas team principal Steiner stressed that the American squad wants to keep the ongoing matter private as he refused to be drawn on concerns ove🅰r damage to the team’s image and reputation.

“The latest is there is no news and we don’t want any news outꦯ of it, we are dealing with it internally and 🔯that’s the only thing I want to say,” Steiner told Sky F1.

“We take this seriously what happened and we will deal 𝔉with it.

“I don’t want to go into any comments about the damage and things like this,♊ I just want to say🌞 trust us and we will deal with it.”

Mazepin finished fifth in the 2020 Formula 2 championship and will make his F1 debut alongside F2 champion Mick Sꦓchumaไcher at Haas next season.

In t🅺he final weekend in Bahrain, Mazepin picked up penaಞlties for separate incidents that left him one point shy of a race ban.

The 21-year-old also rec🌸eived a ban in 2016 after punching Callum Ilott following a post-🍎race disagreement in European Formula 3.