van de Garde sueing Sauber

[MartG]

Giedo van der Garde is suing Sauber demanding that he should be in the car next week. Seems he believes that his contract for last year ran through this year and he should have been driving for the team this year.

Given that he's chosen to launch the action where he has i.e. where the Australian GP is within the court's jurisdiction, I suspect he want to pressure the team into some kind of settlement as the court could prevent Sauber from competing next week. I doubt that he would actually want to be in the car - can you imagine how little support he'd get from the team ? I wonder if Sutil will do something similar, as I understand his contract also ran to the end of this year too

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/van-der-garde-la...

[MartG]

suffolk009 said:

Just read the Joe Saward piece on this.

My guess is that van der Garde needs to clear up his contractual situation before (I hope) driving for Manor this year. Hopefully this is nothing more than legaleeze HR stuff being done in public.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

You could well be right - leaving it to the normal contract negotiation process could drag on leaving him unable to drive for Manor next week

[MartG]

In that case they are screwed unless they can come to some kind of settlement, as their current drivers will no dounbt argue they also have valid contracts

[MartG]

Cyder said:

The team really does seem to have lost any credibility since she took over from PS, no sponsors, no points, court cases etc.

Sad really, they always seemed like a plucky poor mans Williams.

If it was Ferrari she'd already be gone whether it was her fault or not

[MartG]

[MartG]

davepoth said:

Probably. That's the issue. The first two drivers to be signed probably have the best claim to the seats, but since there are 19 jurisdictions to play this game in over the year it could get completely ridiculous if none of them feel like settling.

I suspect that if they are seen as breaching the Swiss court ruling, that court could take action against the team's HQ in Hinwil, which is in that court's direct jurisdiction

[MartG]

Still unsure how this is going to play out long term, despite him 'letting' them race this weekend ( has Bernie had a word ? ).

He's shown them what he's capable of doing to them legally if they don't come to some arrangement which satisfies him - now up to the team to make an offer