MOTORSPORT – Sauber fights judge's order on driver

Formula One team Sauber is fighting the decision earlier today by a Victorian Supreme Court judge that ordered it to let a Dutch driver race for it in the Australian Grand Prix starting on Friday, which would mean dumping one of the drivers it has nominated.

Sauber went to a Court of Appeal in Melbourne this afternoon seeking to have Justice Clyde Croft’s decision that gave a green light to Giedo van der Garde, who was contracted by Sauber last June to race this year – a deal the team has tried to end.

The court will reconvene tomorrow morning (Thursday) to consider firstly whether it will grant leave to appeal, and if it does the case could proceed all day to within 20 hours of F1 practice starting at the Albert Park circuit at 12.30pm on Friday.

Sauber’s barrister, Rodney Garratt, QC, told the court again this afternoon that it would be unsafe to let van der Garde drive one of Sauber’s Ferrari-engined C34 cars rather than the nominated Swede Marcus Ericsson and Brazilian rookie Felipe Nasr, who have done thousands of kilometres of testing in the new model.

The head of the appeal court, Justice Simon Whelan, raised the prospect of the sport’s governing Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) being asked to clarify safety matters for the judges.

Manor Marussia, the team rescued from financial collapse just in time for cars to be freighted to Melbourne last weekend, will have two drivers in its cars – updated 2014 models – who have not done a single test lap in them.

They are Britain’s Will Stevens and Spanish rookie Roberto Merhi.

While Sauber continues to argue that moulding and making a race seat for van der Garde would take two weeks, even though F1 teams historically have made them in hours, van der Garde said after this afternoon’s hearing that he remained confident he would end up in a Sauber.