Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsSauber

Kaltenborn defiant amid van der Garde saga

Monisha Kaltenborn says she has not considered resigning amid the ongoing saga regarding Giedo van der Garde’s seat at Sauber.

Van der Garde claims he has a valid contract to race for Sauber, with the Supreme Court of Victoria upholding the decision of a Swiss court which says he should drive this season. A Sauber appeal was rejected on Thursday before the team faced a contempt of court hearing on Friday, with the cars failing to run in FP1 as proceedings continued.

The hearing is set to continue on Saturday morning with van der Garde’s lawyers having called for Kaltenborn to be imprisoned, and the team principal admits the situation has had a major affect on Sauber.

"It's definitely had a very negative impact on the team because the situation was, for a while, unclear,” Kaltenborn said. “We now have certain actions taken against the team, and we are acting accordingly."

And Kaltenborn insists the situation has not arisen due to the team not thinking thoroughly about its actions in the past.

"We have a very clear view of what we did. We took action after thinking about it for a while. For us that was very clear, but the outcome is different, and that's all I can say to you."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.