McLaren to take Formula 1 rival Red Bull to court over Dan Fallows - F1 news - AUTOSPORT.com And this quote from Ron Dennis? Speaking hypocrite: "Sadly, it's now likely that McLaren will have no alternative other than to pursue a High Court action against Red Bull, which will ask very serious questions as to that team's integrity and sense of fair play," Dennis told AUTOSPORT
Ron should focus on investing McLaren's money into the development of their F1 car and not in the court room.
The latest talk on this subject is that Dan Fallows didn't get on working with Peter Prodromou at Red Bull and so decided to jump ship to McLaren. He signed a contract with McLaren expecting to have a happier time with a new team but then discovered that McLaren had also signed Prodromou. This left him questioning how the hierarchy would/could work at McLaren with both of them there, and he realized that he would be in the same situation as he was in at Red Bull. At this point he realized that it wasn't what he wanted. Now here's where it all gets a bit messy: The deal and contract signed at McLaren was done with Martin Whitmarsh. Fallows is now claiming that because Whitmarsh is no longer in charge of/at(?) McLaren, the contract is no longer valid and so thinks that he is free to remain at Red Bull and get away from Prodromou. McLaren's view is that regardless of who brokered the deal on their side, the contract is with the team, and not with a member of the team and so the contract is still valid. So why is McLaren taking legal action against Red Bull rather than Fallows? McLaren believe that Fallows has been coerced into ignoring his McLaren contract/stating that it is no longer valid, by Red Bull. This is in part based on the fact that despite knowing that he'd signed for McLaren, they've promoted him to being the head of their aerodynamics department. An alternative motive? as things stand, due to Prodromou's existing Red Bull contract, he cannot join McLaren immediately and is currently on "gardening leave". There is a suspicion in the F1 paddock that all the talk of legal action by McLaren against Red Bull could be them using the Fallows situation as leverage to get Prodromou out of his Red Bull contract and off the "gardening leave" sooner! (a case of: "Tell you what, you let us have Prodromou straight away and we'll drop our legal action and claim to Fallows)
Whitmarsh set for $10m McLaren payout report Motorsport.com | Racing News, Race Results - F1, NASCAR, IndyCar and more
As I've posted, suspicions are that it's really about getting Peter Prodromou released from his Red Bull contract sooner rather than being about money.
Rather than that, I would have worked to get a giant sponsor than wasting my time in a court room, if i were Ron.
As I've posted in the SD resigned thread, the talk in the paddock in China from people who actually know SD well and spoke to him on a regular basis was that he genuinely did resign of his own accord and wasn't coerced or pushed into it. Most of them, including the TV people who spoke with him at every race, had noticed that in the last couple of weeks he had changed and was no longer his normal, happy go lucky self. Don't you think if Ferrari were determined to remove SD one way or another that they would have had a more suitable replacement lined up rather than a guy who has never managed a race team before?
And now Ferrari appear to be slipping back into their old bad habits when it comes to it's management selection! (Still, at least they're avoiding any legal distractions unlike others! )
