Nyck de Vries will be taken to court for the alleged non-payment of a loan.
Nyck de Vries is making headlines this week, just in the months leading up to his debut as a full-time Formula 1 driver with the AlphaTauri team, and it’s because of an unpleasant subject. The pilot has been sued for the alleged non-payment of a loan granted in 2018 to cover the expenses of his career in Formula 2.
At that time, the real estate magnate Jeroen Schothors, who was the CEO of the fashion firm McGregor, made a loan of 250,000 euros to the Dutch pilot through the investment company Investrand. This sum was key so that De Vries could continue competing in F2 and keep alive the dream of Formula 1, which little by little had become unattainable.
In return, De Vries would have to repay the loan money, with interest at 3% per year, but there was a fine print: if Nick made it to Formula 1 in 2022, he would have to pay half his salary, and if he did not, the loan would be cancelled.
And this is where the controversy arises, because De Vries, after being F2 champion in 2019 and Formula E in 2021, made his F1 debut ‘accidentally’ in the Monza race last year, after replacing Alexander at Williams. Albon who had to be operated on for emergency appendicitis.
Despite not having a full-time contract, it could have been the trigger for the dispute, since that performance was key for de Vries to sign his contract as an official F1 driver for 2023. In addition, the driver and lender would have had and their quarrels, since Schothors would have offered to be manager of De Vries… and he was opposed.
It may seem logical that, when he arrives in F1 full-time in 2023, his old lender will stop asking for the interest, but it has not been the case. The Dutchman, who has repaid €190,000 of the €250,000 borrowed, is determined to repay the full amount, but that is not enough for the businessman.
As if all this were not enough, apparently, Schothors and De Vries had agreed that the pilot shared the information included in their contracts between 2018 and 2022, something that the lender assures that the pilot has not done, which has angered him even more. , since Nyck was a Mercedes F1 test driver between 2021 and 2022, and participated in the aforementioned Monza race with Williams, and he does not know what benefit he obtained.
“It’s fantastic that Nyck has managed to become an F1 driver. Now we will have two Dutch F1 drivers at the Dutch Grand Prix in August,” Schothorst told De Telegraaf. “We invested in De Vries’s career at a crucial time and when no one wanted to.”
“We do not agree with the interpretation of the agreement that we signed at the time. These are things that happen and, unfortunately, we cannot avoid taking the matter to court. We would really have preferred to see it differently, but that does not alter the fact that As a motorsport fan, I wish Nyck every success in his racing career.”
The matter has been brought before the Amsterdam court, which will rule on this matter on February 3. A few days later, when his AlphaTauri is presented on the 11th, he can begin to focus on his main task: convincing his new team of his very high quality as a pilot.