Formula 2 racer’s father banned from paddock following altercation

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In the round-up: Cem Bolukbasi’s father has had his credentials withdrawn for the Silverstone round, following a “scuffle” with Roy Nissany’s team.

In brief

Bolukbasi fined after father’s altercation with DAMS team

Formula 2 racer and former F1 Esports competitor Cem Bolukbasi has been fined €5,000 (£4,268) and his father, Yavuz Bolukbasi, banned from the paddock for one round following a “minor scuffle” that took place after Sunday’s feature race in Baku.

Bolukbasi retired from the race following a collision with DAMS driver Roy Nissany. Bolukbasi’s father subsequently confronted Nissany at his team’s garage. The situation escalated into physical tussle, which the stewards took a dim view of.

“After an on track incident between cars 16 (Nissany) and 23 (Bolukbasi) the father of the driver of car 23, Mr Yavuz Bolukbasi, along with the driver’s manager went to the DAMS paddock tent,” the stewards explained.

“Mr Bolukbasi admitted that he lost his temper when he thought that the driver of car 16 made a derogatory comment about his son. At the DAMS tent Mr Bolukbasi provoked a heated verbal exchange with the driver of car 16. As the verbal exchange escalated the trainer for Roy Nissany became involved and there was some pushing and physical contact between the father and the trainer (Francesco). No punches were exchanged and the unwanted guests were removed from the area.

“At no time will physical violence, nor the threat of such be tolerated. In keeping with ISC Art. 9.15.1 competitors are responsible for all acts of persons to whom they have given access to the reserved areas. The threat of violence and the actual minor scuffle that took place as initiated by Mr Bolukbasi are determined to be a breach of ISC 12.2.1(c).

Accordingly the driver is fined and the individual initiating the offence is sanctioned.

Stroll retirement caused by vibration

Lance Stroll’s retirement from the Azerbaijan Grand Prix was caused by an unidentified vibration, he said after the race.

“It is a shame that we had to retire the car,” said Stroll. “The engineers could see the car was suffering from a vibration issue, so they asked me to retire the car. We are still not quite sure what the problem was, so we will have to do some work over the next week to investigate it and fix things.”

Sebastian Vettel recorded the team’s best result of the season so far with sixth place. “Sebastian proved our car has the pace, so hopefully we can come back stronger for my home race in Canada next week,” Stroll added.

Toyota takes fifth consecutive Le Mans win

Former Toro Rosso drivers Brendon Hartley and Sebastien Buemi shared victory at Le Mans for Toyota with Super Formula driver Ryo Hirakawa, a newcomer to the team. The number eight Toyota hypercar finished over two minutes ahead of the team’s sister car. It is Buemi’s fourth Le Mans victory and Hartley’s third.

All five hypercar entries finished the race, with Glickenhaus’ entries taking third and fourth place, respectively five and ten laps down from the lead Toyota.

Buemi’s fellow Formula E champion Antonio Felix da Costa and former Marussia driver Will Stevens took LMP2 honours with team mate Roberto Gonzalez. They battled for much of the race with former Williams driver and Alfa Romeo reserve Robert Kubica and former Formula 2 racer and Haas reserve Louis Deletraz, who came second in the class alongside amateur team mate Lorenzo Colombo.

Vips ‘really pushing’ before race-losing crash – Hauger

Formula 2 feature race winner Dennis Hauger suspects the pressure he was applying to fellow Red Bull junior Jüri Vips prompted his crash while leading yesterday’s race.

“I really tried to keep some pressure on Jüri and on the lap he crashed I put in a purple sector one,” Hauger said after the race. “I really wanted to make the step to get right behind him before the straight, but then he maybe got stressed or something.”

“He was really pushing so obviously with the small margins it can happen. I’m happy we kept it clean and in the end got our first feature race win.”

Vips apologised for his error in a social media post. “Sorry to my team and everyone who supports me,” he said. “Messed up, shouldn’t happen.”

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Comment of the day

After drivers experienced severe bouncing and Lewis Hamilton visibly struggled to get out of his car following the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Chris VB raises the point that drivers taking a physical beating in races is a more serious safety issue than jewellery:

So several years ago, Alonso had to pass a fitness test after his crash to prove that he could get out of the car quickly enough. (If I’m not mistaken.)

Setting how much difficulty Lewis had to get out of his car at the end of this race, I think FIA should have a serious talk about safety with Mercedes. Would he be able to get out of the car in time in case of a crash near the end of the race?

Use the sensors already in the car to measure the forces on the drivers. If they are too high due to porpoising teams should be fined and ride height increased until the forces are at acceptable levels. And leave the teams alone that have it under control.
Chris VB

Happy birthday!

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Author information

Hazel Southwell
Hazel is a motorsport and automotive journalist with a particular interest in hybrid systems, electrification, batteries and new fuel technologies....

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18 comments on “Formula 2 racer’s father banned from paddock following altercation”

  1. I find it odd that a mega company like Merc can’t seem to fix it’s porpoise issue. Seems almost too hard to fathom .

    1. They probably can solve it, but choose not to do it because of adverse impact on overall speed.

    2. Budget Cap + limited regulatory freedom on suspension means it isn’t a simple fix.

    3. I can’t imagine what will happen if Lewis hurts himself just because Mercedes doesn’t want to slow their car down just to get rid of porpoising. Talk about a happy ending to that story

  2. Thing with COTD is that if the FIA were to start doing things like that then where does it stop?

    Your also entering dangerous territory in terms of the FIA basically dictating the setup and performance of the car which could create controversy if in say a last race title decider they force a team to raise the car which destroys the performance despite a driver saying the bouncing isn’t causing them an issue and that decision thus hands the title to the other team.

    On one hand some may see it as sensible, But on the other hand its basically the governing body manipulating the performance of one car in a way that to me just doesn’t seem right.

    But as i said yesterday, To all of us who were watching in the last ground effect period of F1 the issues drivers are suffering from is all too familiar. The stiff ride and bouncing is something that happened back then and is why the drivers of that period hated driving those cars and why few were sorry to see ground effects banned at the end of 1982.

    1. I think it stops when the car is deemed to be running safely. Safety features always have an impact on performance. Seeing Lewis struggling to get out of the car should be enough for action to be taken. The cumulative effect on the spine and brain will start cutting careers short at this rate.

    2. FIA and Liberty went too far with the 2022 regs. They produced a formula that’s high in downforce in the venturi tunnels, and too stiffly sprung to be safe for the cars, with no options for the teams to provide any kind of bleed-off of the forces involved.

      Watching IndyCar at Road America, it’s obvious that you can have venturi tunnels and large diffusers for downforce, without massive amounts of porpoising– because I’m not seeing any.

      Ferrari may appear to not have problems– but they had a double DNF, and their drivers were bouncing like a jackhammer. The Red Bull seems to be the only car not seriously affected, but I suspect if you put the sort of sensors being proposed on the Red Bull, they’d have to raise their ride height as well.

      Looking at the times from the race today, it’s pretty apparent that we’ve still got the fast three, and “everyone else”– so in that sense, the 2022 regs are still a failure, because the FIA still wants to make the cars “more difficult” for the drivers– and that’s not the sort of philosophy that’s going to make it easier for the slower teams to catch up. If you want parity, you need to make parity easier to attain.

    3. petebaldwin (@)
      13th June 2022, 9:28

      They already do dictate setups due to safety. They have minimum tyre pressure that the teams all complained about for example but these are in place to avoid blow outs. We all know the teams would happily risk it and run lower pressures if they were allowed to and thought they could get more performance out of it so in order to protect the drivers, limits were set.

      1. @petebaldwin I guess the difference would be that dictating setups relating to the tyres (Minimum tyre pressures & camber levels) is the same for everyone rather than then going to a specific team & saying they have to run x while others are running y.

        In the case of the bouncing & porpoising it would be the FIA going to different teams & telling them they have to run at different ride heights, spring stiffness etc… to others which would be something that would impact everyone to different degrees.

        1. @stefmeister

          I guess the difference would be that dictating setups relating to the tyres (Minimum tyre pressures & camber levels) is the same for everyone rather than then going to a specific team & saying they have to run x while others are running y.

          2 remarks on this part:
          1) you’d actually want the teams to policy this themselves. If Lewis is really hurting to the point where he might not participate in next round due to severe back pain, then Mercedes really should not be running like this.
          2) failing 1), it would still be the same for all teams if they mandate something like a “maximum energetic load towards the driver” or something like that. How they get to that, be it ride height or something else, is then up to the teams to solve.

  3. COTD raises a false argument unfortunately.
    Drivers have been known to injure their backs even without porpoising. The drivers were fine before the race and could have passed any fitness test.
    Grosjean got himself out of a very bad situation even despite the pain of burning skin. If there is enough motivation, a driver can get himself out.
    When the race is over and there is no longer any urgency, a driver can take his time and not lean on those parts that cause discomfort.

    1. If there is enough motivation, a driver can get himself out.

      A bit harsh to those drivers (and grieving families) who couldn’t get themselves out.

      1. Surely harsher to think for one minute OOliver’s comments were meant to incorporate the individuals to whom you refer.

  4. I feel so bad for Vips, I still believe he’s a great talent, but unfortunately that’s the kind of mistake a driver that wants to be in F1 cannot do. I see Hauger winning next year and getting a seat in Alpha, I don’t think he’s better than Lawson or Vips, both could race in F1, but he’s in a better spot for sure.

  5. Although an RB program driver probably won’t get promoted to F1 for next season either, Vips still can’t afford such unforced errors given the competition between him & his fellow academy drivers.

    Good catch by Matthew Riordan.

    Sam Collins’ tweet: Nothing goes right for Ferrari.

    COTD raises a valid point, but like PeterG points out, such a move by FIA could risk entering dangerous territory in the form of them effectively impacting performances & setups with possible unintended consequences.

  6. In terms of the bouncing I wonder if there is something that could be done to help the drivers in terms of the seat.

    Some extra padding or something else put between the seat & floor of the car in order to reduce the peak of the forces been transferred to the driver.

    I think looking into something like that wouldn’t just help drivers that are been badly affected by the bouncing issue now as it’s not exactly been uncommon over the years to see a driver in F1 & other categories suffer back pain or an injury as a result of a bad kerb strike or from a car coming off the ground a bit & landing hard.

    1. A bit like a crash helmet for their backside ;)

      1. A butt bucket. But would need to be built from an energy absorbing material that ideally exhibits negative mass potential – using an anti-matter composite. Fairly sure CERN rental costs are excluded from the cap.

Comments are closed.