Nico Hulkenberg fires warning to F1 chiefs over banning... from Baku

Nico Hulkenberg fires warning to F1 chiefs over banning… from Baku…read more

Nico Hulkenberg has voiced his concerns over the recent one-race ban handed to his Haas teammate, Kevin Magnussen, and the broader impact of Formula 1’s penalty points system. Magnussen is set to miss the Azerbaijan Grand Prix after accumulating the maximum 12 penalty points on his Super Licence, which triggered an automatic one-race ban. This penalty was the result of an incident at Monza, where Magnussen made slight contact with Pierre Gasly at Turn 4, causing neither driver to make the corner.

Magnussen was handed a 10-second penalty for the incident, which dropped him from ninth to tenth place in the final classification. Additionally, he received two penalty points on his Super Licence. This brought his total to 12, the threshold at which a driver incurs an automatic race ban. Even Gasly himself was reportedly surprised by the severity of the punishment, as the incident seemed relatively minor.

While Magnussen has not publicly commented on the ban, Hulkenberg did not hold back in expressing his frustration. Speaking in Baku, Hulkenberg questioned the fairness of the stewards’ decision and suggested that the penalty system might need to be re-evaluated to avoid overly harsh consequences for minor racing incidents.

Hulkenberg explained, “Obviously, there’s a history, how that happened and accumulated all those penalty points. But if you look just isolated at the Monza incident, I think that’s racing, you know? I mean, pretty straightforward, fair and square racing. I don’t see two penalty points for that, or that 10-second penalty – even that’s very harsh.”

The German driver compared the situation to his own experience earlier in the season when he made contact with Fernando Alonso during the Austrian Sprint race. Hulkenberg had attempted to overtake Alonso at Turn Three but locked up and ran wide, forcing Alonso off the track. Despite the contact, Hulkenberg emphasized that both drivers considered it a racing incident and did not believe any penalties were necessary.

“If you can’t sometimes overtake, we have to leave the comfort zone and take some risk. And then that kind of happens sometimes,” Hulkenberg said. He went on to express concern that the stewards were becoming overly involved in such situations, penalizing drivers for minor contact that he believes is simply part of racing. “It seems a bit that the stewards whenever there’s a little contact, they want to get involved. They want to have a consequence for it, which I think the drivers feel is not really necessary for every contact.”

Hulkenberg argued that if this approach continues, it could lead to less exciting races, as drivers may become overly cautious out of fear of being penalized. “Maybe the penalty guidelines or whatever, maybe need to be reviewed and changed, because we need to be able to race, and it’s just difficult. Otherwise, it will be boring and dull because we can’t do that anymore, we’d just get penalized all the time,” he said.

However, Hulkenberg acknowledged that the penalty points system does serve a purpose when it comes to addressing truly dangerous driving. The system was introduced following Romain Grosjean’s crash at the 2012 Belgian Grand Prix, which was deemed reckless and led to the creation of the penalty points system to discourage dangerous behavior. Hulkenberg believes the system should remain in place for extreme cases.

“It should [exist], obviously it is for extreme cases and if drivers really do something silly or dangerous. I think it’s good to have that to keep us under control. And so we know there is a consequence if we do something stupid or silly,” he explained.

Despite his support for the overall concept of the system, Hulkenberg feels the current implementation may be too strict, especially for minor incidents like the one at Monza. He emphasized that while the penalty points accumulated from last season, the Monza penalty was fresh in his mind, and it seemed unnecessarily harsh.

Magnussen’s absence from Baku means that Haas will field a new driver for the race weekend. Oliver Bearman, who previously filled in for Carlos Sainz at Ferrari earlier this year, will step in to partner Hulkenberg. Bearman finished seventh in his F1 debut, and it remains to be seen how he will perform alongside Hulkenberg at Haas.