Van der Garde to not race in Melbourne, releases statement

Giedo van der Garde

From Giedo van der Garde's Facebook page:

With respect to the interest of motorsport, and F1 in particular, I have decided to give up my legal rights to race this weekend at the Melbourne Grand Prix.

As I am a passionate race driver this decision has been very difficult for me.

However I also wish to respect the interest of the FIA, Sauber Motorsport, as well as Nasr and Ericsson.

My management will continue talks with Sauber early next week to find a mutually acceptable solution for the current situation that has now arisen.

I am confident such solution will be found and I will inform the media once done.·

As part of an agreement reached between Sauber and Van der Garde, the Dutch has apparently dropped his contempt of court action against the team. He will not race in Melbourne this weekend.

However, the case is still pending as ruling Van der Garde received in Switzerland saying he had a valid contract and the Australian court order which enforced that ruling remain.

Expect team and driver to work out some sort of settlement between this weekend's Australian Grand Prix and the Malaysian Grand Prix in two weeks. And reportedly such a settlement may in fact mean Van der Garde does race for Sauber at some point this year.

We will continue to follow this most bizarre of bizarre cases.

AR1 Staff Report
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