AlphaTauri F1 rookie Nyck de Vries is facing a lawsuit from a Dutch real estate magnate who supported his career in 2018 with a €250,000 personal loan.
According to Dutch newspaper Financial Dagblad, Jeroen Schothorst has initiated legal action against the 27-year-old driver for withholding financial information and breaching the terms of a loan agreement between de Vries and the Dutch financier's investment company, Investrand.
The latter provided de Vries with a personal loan of €250,000 that helped the latter secure his seat with Italian outfit Prema in the 2018 FIA Formula 2 Championship.
According to the report, de Vries was charged 3% annual interest on the loan, while the covenant also obligated the young driver to hand back 50% of any income related to F1 and to periodically divulge to Schothorst's company his income.
However, the terms of the loan also stipulated that if de Vries failed to secure an F1 drive for 2022, the Dutchman would be relieved of his financial obligations.
Although de Vries has reportedly paid back to Investrand an aggregate amount of €190,000, he was under the assumption that the loan had expired given his inability to secure a spot on the grid in 2022, and despite that he had made his race debut with Williams at Monza, a one-off with the British outfit.
But Schothorst claimed in an Amsterdam court this week that de Vries had failed to report the relevant financial information, including details related to his 2023 contract with AlphaTauri.
The Dutch businessman also believes that de Vries' reserve and testing role with Mercedes and several other teams last year qualifies as "entering F1 in 2022, as stipulated by the loan agreement.
"Let me, first of all, say that I think it is fantastic for Nyck that he has become successful as a Formula 1 driver and that there will be two Dutch drivers at the start of the Dutch Grand Prix in August," said Schothorst in a statement released to the Dutch media.
"We invested in de Vries' career at a crucial moment and when nobody else wanted to do it anymore. We now have different opinions on the interpretation of the agreement we entered into with each other at the time.
"Things like that happen and as a result, we, unfortunately, cannot escape taking the matter to court. We really would have preferred this to be different, but that does not alter the fact that, as a motorsport fan, I wish Nyck all possible success in the continuation of his career."
Through his lawyers, de Vries has denied the allegations by Schotshorst.
"From everything it appears that Investrand cannot stomach that de Vries became a race driver in Formula 1 in season 2023, and not in the last year of the agreement," they said.
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