F2 racer’s father given paddock ban for altercation

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…