Ferrucci retains Haas backing, despite F2 sacking

Haas will retain Santino Ferrucci as part of its young driver program, despite the American's sacking from his Formula 2 team for deliberately crashing into his team-mate. Trident terminated Ferrucci's deal in July over his conduct at the British Grand Prix, as well as a failure to honour payment commitments to the team.

Ferrucci ran Trident team-mate Arjun Maini - also a Haas junior driver - off the road at the Sunday sprint race at Silverstone earlier this month, the pair having collided in Saturday's feature race too.

After the second race, Ferrucci bizarrely smashed into the right-rear of his team-mate's car. He boasted about the incident on Twitter, but later claimed it had been an accident and deleted his posts.

Ferrucci was also fined after being caught driving from the support paddock to race pitlane wearing just one glove and holding a mobile phone in his ungloved hand and refused to attend any stewards meetings over the numerous incidents.

The American was banned for four races and fined €66,000, but has since signed a deal with IndyCar team Dale Coyne Racing after Trident let him go.

Very excited to be back behind the wheel of an @IndyCar for @DaleCoyneRacing! https://t.co/5XbqPguCIC — Santino Ferrucci (@SantinoFerrucci) August 17, 2018

Haas team principal Guenther Steiner says the 20-year-old still has the backing of the F1 team, however,

Speaking at the Belgian Grand Prix, he 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."