McLaren Racing<\/a> CEO Zak Brown has hit the stand in the High Court of London over the past two days to offer testimony related to this suit.<\/p>\nPalou\u2019s counsel Nick De Marco quizzed Brown on what he positioned as Brown\u2019s making \u201cfalse promises of F1 glory\u201d to drivers like Palou before ultimately \u201cshafting them\u201d by choosing to fill an F1 seat with a different driver.<\/p>\n
De Marco argued that Palou signed a contract with McLaren under the promise of moving to Formula 1, only to discover that the team had signed long-term deals with Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.<\/p>\n
Brown stated that \u201cI never strung along Alex. I never told him he would be under consideration for 2023\u2026 there was some optionality to join F1.\u201d Further, he claimed that singing Piastri on a long-term deal with Palou waiting in the wings was a \u2018Plan B\u2019, while \u2018Plan C\u2019 represented Palou taking over Piastri\u2019s seat should the rookie fail to live up to the team\u2019s standards.<\/p>\n
Further, Brown alleged that Palou\u2019s presence on the team was a prerequisite for sponsor NTT Data to ink a deal with McLaren.<\/p>\n
\u201cNTT entered into negotiations in the first place because they knew Alex was coming to McLaren, and the amount they were willing to pay was based on Alex driving for us,\u201d Brown explained to the court.<\/p>\n
\u201cHad there been a less experienced driver, or a driver that was not as good, the price we agreed with NTT would not have been as high as it eventually was, or they may have decided not to partner with us at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should have been focusing on track performance and finding new sponsors, but you cannot focus on that when you do not know who will be in your car.\u201d<\/p>\n
Further, Brown alleged that Palou \u201ceffectively rolled a grenade into the room and let it go off, leaving me to deal with the consequences with our sponsors\u201d when he backed out of the deal.<\/p>\n
Yet Brown\u2019s testimony was complicated by allegations that McLaren destroyed evidence that could be critical in the case.<\/p>\n
A series of WhatsApp messages were brought before the court, with one from former McLaren IndyCar team manager Gavin Ward telling a contact that McLaren required its members to use WhatsApp\u2019s seven-day disappearing message function in order to \u201ccover their ass on lawsuits.\u201d<\/p>\n
Additionally, a message in which Brown told recipients to use WhatsApp and delete exchanges was displayed; that message dated back to August 2023, just before Palou opted to remain with Chip Ganassi Racing.<\/p>\n
In response to allegations from De Marco that Brown utilized the disappearing messages feature to \u201cdestroy evidence,\u201d Brown explained that utilizing the disappearing messages function was company policy. He further reaffirmed that he was \u201ccompliant in preserving documents associated with this case.\u201d<\/p>\n
The case is ongoing, with Palou expected to take the stand on Thursday, October 9.<\/p>\n
Read next:\u00a0The future of McLaren\u2019s papaya rules: Are \u2018consequences\u2019 now out of the window?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown has hit the stand to offer his testimony in an ongoing lawsuit against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[71844,64,63,817,813,816,818,5856,913,44,85,9657],"class_list":{"0":"post-200838","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-alex-palou","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-f1","12":"tag-formula-1","13":"tag-formula1","14":"tag-home-page","15":"tag-indycar","16":"tag-mclaren","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-zak-brown"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}