I don't mind the Haas livery. Nothing to write home about, and I was unaware that national flags couldn't be used as liveries.
Yeah, the WADA ruling on Russian athletes not being allowed to compete under the Russian flag, but it doesn't stop them using the colours of the flag. As such, this car can be argued that it uses the colours of the Russian Flag in the right order, but the proportions are wrong, meaning at no point does it
officially have the flag on it. It's pretty much on the borderline of being illegal, and WADA won't have many issues claiming it's too Russian though.
The outrage is nothing to do with national colours on a car. Alpine have built a livery around Le Tricolore, Aston Martin have gone for British Racing Green, Ferrari have run the Italian flag before and there are plenty of other examples of national flags on cars.
This though is just a combination of many factors leading to the reaction it's got. An American team selling out to a Russian oligarch, plastering the Russian flag over to stick their fingers up at a ruling against said country, all for a driver who is vastly unpopular not even for his "rich daddy" image and Russian ancestry (Petrov, Kvyat and Sirotkin were all fine, we didn't care about them being Russian, so Mazepin doesn't deserve that hate either).
The Mazepins are trying to get into F1 like the Strolls, but the difference between the pair of them cannot be bigger. Lance was actually a Champion in the lower formulae and has since scored a bunch of strong results that aren't to be sniffed at. Stroll's only real issues coming into F1 was young age (he was a couple of years too early) and a penchant for causing crashes through lack of spacial awareness in F3. That was it. Lawrence's money kept Williams afloat for a few years, he saved Force India when it went down and now he's bought Aston Martin and saved an even more legendary name from collapsing. Lawrence knows how to spend his money and uses it wisely. And if it means his talented and completely uncontroversial son stays in F1 for a long time. As I said before, pretty much the only thing Lance has ever done wrong for his image is say "uhhhhh" a lot in interviews. He's not a natural public speaker, which in the grand scheme of things is nowhere near the crimes of existence that a lot of idiotic commenters seem to blast him for.
Nikita has shown nothing in Lower Formulae. 2nd in GP3 in 2018 is his only accolade really, His wheel-to-wheel antics can only be described as dangerous. Most of his penalty points and major incidents in F2 can only be attributed to malice and/or deliberate action. You don't drive two people off track at the end of DRS zones without knowing they're there - and that Sochi start crash in 2019 was straight up dangerous rejoining. He's got a reputation for being awful to race on track, not helped by a blight of awful off-track moments of which he's lucky that the sporting authorities seem to give them some kind of immunity because there's some serious criminal charges that could be filed for some of those incidents.
If you're a Mazepin fan, this car is awesome. If you're literally the other 99.9% of the racing community, this livery is a sign of a complete sell-out by Haas and a pandering to a driver we knew wasn't the most worthy of promotion to F1. He wasn't even the best Russian on the F2 grid. Seriously, if this livery was put up because it was Robert Shwartzmann in the seat, the reaction wouldn't be anywhere near as bad as this has been (Obviously it wouldn't go down well, but not to this level).
Nikita needs to be blindingly fast this season or he will be slaughtered by the fans for eternity. Lance Stroll scored a stunning Podium and a Front Row start in the terrible rain in his debut season - has since scored two more podiums and a mega pole position at the wet Istanbul circuit - and still gets hate. The Haas is going to be a backmarker this season, so he doesn't have much chance of anything special, so I don't see Mazepin having any chance to silence the haters. Really, the only good thing about him being at the back is that there won't be many people put in danger of having to battle him wheel to wheel.