Giedo van der Garde, Sauber Row Risks Overshadowing 2015 Australian Grand Prix
You can see it now.
It's the first lap of the Australian Grand Prix and Giedo van der Garde, having been caught up in the annual bedlam at Turn 1 of the Albert Park circuit, radios the Sauber team to report a puncture.
"Box, box," comes the reply, and so at the end of the lap, Van der Garde peels off into the pit entry.
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His C34 trundles its way down the lane toward the army of mechanics, complete with their jacks, wheel guns and spare Pirellis, primed and ready to complete their first pit stop of the season.
Van der Garde successfully manages to navigate his car into the slot created by the engineers and comes to a halt, his car primed and ready to be serviced.
But nothing happens.
The Sauber mechanics, in full cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face mode, stand motionless as the sound of V6 turbos soaring past on the other side of the pit wall reverberates through the slow lane.
Van der Garde, falling further behind as each second passes, waves his arms and shakes his head but, trapped in the pit box by his own colleagues, has nowhere to go.
And is left with no option but to jump out of the car and withdraw from the race.
The prospect of a scenario of that ilk—in other words, the team turning on their driver in a very bold, public way—playing out in the Australian GP is not as far-fetched as it may sound at the end of a week which has seen the war between Sauber and Van der Garde turn even nastier.
Tensions were high enough at the end of last year when the Swiss outfit, as per Blick (h/t motorsport.com), revoked the paddock pass of Van der Garde, their 2014 reserve driver, ahead of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, with this week's court case in Australia elevating the sense of ill-feeling to a whole new level.
As reported by Autosport's Lawrence Barretto, the Dutchman took Sauber to court after they failed to honour an agreement, made last June, for Van der Garde to race for the team this year, with the backmarkers signing Marcus Ericsson and Felipe Nasr as their 2015 race drivers in quick succession last November.
Van der Garde's victory, along with Sauber's failed appeal, as per ESPN F1, has compelled the team to drop either Nasr or Ericsson—who according to the Press Association's Ian Parkes (h/t Daily Mail) both supply the team with £10-12 million in financial backing—and run the Dutch driver in the new season.
And as much as the outfit may not want to—F1 journalist Adam Cooper has reported that the team have not been receptive with "a series of requests" made by the driver's camp, while Van der Garde's name was absent from the official Australian GP entry list—it is arguably the safest option for Sauber, with Cooper reporting that their equipment could be seized if the team are found to be in contempt of court.
Although it is easy to mock the team for effectively hiring three men to drive two cars, the situation in which Sauber currently find themselves is yet another reminder of the difficulties facing outfits at the rear of the modern Formula One grid.
Making little money from their on-track exploits and external backing—the C34 is almost devoid of sponsorship logos—teams such as Sauber are constantly forced to hunt for drivers whose bank balance acts as a life support machine.
And as the desperation and the need to make enough money to survive increases, any sense of morality and legality is bound to go out of the window as a team does what it simply needs to do to remain in existence.
In this case, Nasr and Ericsson's willingness to not only provide more money than Van der Garde but to pay up front—as claimed by BBC Sport's Andrew Benson—was always going to give the Brazilian and the Swede the edge in the race for a 2015 seat as Sauber's financial situation worsened, regardless of any prior agreement with the Dutchman.
After all, the fact that both Ericsson and Nasr were signed within nine days of Caterham and Marussia's fall into administration arguably suggests just how close the Swiss team themselves were to being sidelined at the end of 2014.
However, the argument put forward by Sauber lawyer Rodney Garrett, as reported by Radio Australia (h/t Adam Cooper), that Van der Garde would have presented "an unacceptable risk of physical harm or even death" if he took part in the Melbourne race was baseless.
Van der Garde's act of revenge, and his apparent willingness to take the team down with him by starving Sauber of the funds they need from Ericsson and Nasr, is hardly going to make the Dutchman an attractive proposition among rival team principals, but it is revealing that his fellow drivers have spoken in support of the 29-year-old.
Sergio Perez, the former Sauber driver, was quoted by Sky Sports' William Esler and James Galloway of how drivers must be treated with "respect," while another ex-Sauber starlet Felipe Massa told the same source that the affair is "sad for the sport."
And that is the overriding feeling as the race weekend fast approaches.
This year's Australian Grand Prix is meant to be a joyous affair, one that encapsulates all that is good about Formula One.
From the commencement of Round 2 between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg and Sebastian Vettel's first appearance in a Ferrari, to the long-awaited comeback of McLaren-Honda, a young record-breaker in the shape of 17-year-old Max Verstappen and Manor's return from the dead, F1 has plenty of celebrate at Albert Park this weekend.
But all of that seems to be paling into insignificance as the usual stories of controversy and money worries, the single biggest topic at the tail end of last year, come to the forefront.
It remains to be seen whether Van der Garde does indeed take to the track behind the wheel of a Sauber this weekend.
But for F1's sake, let's hope 2015 hasn't started as it means to go on.
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