Formula One driver Giedo van der Garde’s bid to compete at the Australian Grand Prix hung in the balance yesterday after Sauber appealed against a court order to let him race.
The Dutchman won the case, but the Victoria Supreme Court agreed to hear Sauber’s appeal today, a day before official practice starts at the season-opener in Melbourne.
Van der Garde claims he was guaranteed a seat for this season, but that Sauber reneged on the deal and instead handed berths to Sweden’s Marcus Ericsson, or rookie Brazilian Felipe Nasr, who are heavily sponsored.
Photo: AFP
He originally took his case to a Swiss arbitration tribunal, which ordered Sauber to keep him on the team. Victoria Supreme Court Justice Clyde Croft backed that ruling, enforcing it in Australia.
Croft said his decision was made purely on points of law.
The outcome opened the door for Van der Garde, 29, a reserve driver for the Swiss team last year, to compete in Sunday’s season-opener, pending Sauber’s appeal.
“We’ll see what comes out tomorrow and I’m still hopeful,” Van der Garde told reporters outside court after it agreed to hear the appeal. “I’m very fit and very strong. I’m looking forward to going back to the team, [to] work hard and do our best for the weekend.”
Sauber lawyer Rodney Garratt had earlier argued it would be “reckless” to let him compete in an unfamiliar car tailored to another driver and without going through the two-week seat-fitting process.
He said such a move would be “dangerous” and put other drivers and support staff at an “unacceptable” risk.
“Mr Van der Garde has no experience driving the C34 Ferrari and would not have sufficient time to learn,” Garratt told the court.
However, Van der Garde’s lawyer Tom Clarke argued that in 2012, a Formula One driver was fitted with a seat just three days after being granted a drive by an emergency ruling.
Sauber’s chief executive Monisha Kaltenborn said the team was “disappointed” with the ruling, in a statement released before it launched its appeal.
“What we cannot do is jeopardize the safety of our team, or any other driver on the track, by having an unprepared driver in a car that has now been tailored to two other assigned drivers,” Kaltenborn said.
Van der Garde insisted there would be no safety issues if he was in the cockpit for Sunday’s race.
“No, not at all. I’m the fittest ever. I’ve been training the last three months flat-out,” he said, adding that despite the dispute he was keen to work with Sauber again. “I’m looking forward to going back to the team. I had a very good relationship, I still have a very good relationship, with the team.”
Van der Garde, who drove for fellow minnows Caterham during the 2013 season, making 19 starts, said he would be on track at Albert Park yesterday afternoon to prepare for the race. Sauber endured a poor season last year, failing to register a single point in 19 races.
However, they showed encouraging speed and reliability in pre-season testing, with Nasr going fastest on the second day of the first test in Jerez, Spain.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier