Giedo van der Garde shares who the ‘biggest culprit’ was for his Formula 1 career ending

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Dutch driver Giedo van der Garde spent one season in Formula 1 but felt he should have had a longer career at the pinnacle of motorsport with Sauber.

The team currently line up with Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu on the grid but have been through plenty of drivers in their time.

Speaking to RacingNews365, the 38-year-old driver was explaining how his short spell in F1 came to an end.

Fans had to wait a long time for Giedo van der Garde to finally make his Formula 1 debut.

He was initially a test driver for Spyker F1 all the way back in 2007, before joining Force India in the same role a year later.

He won Formula Renault 3.5 that year before four seasons in GP2 where he recorded a highest finish of fifth in the standings.

Van der Garde was finally given his chance in 2013 with Caterham but struggled to make much of an impression with the back markers, securing a highest finish of 14^th in Hungary.

He thought he had a driver with Sauber in 2014 lined up, but Van der Garde soon realised that wasn’t necessarily the case.

The Dutchman was one of several drivers promised a seat with the team that year, including Esteban Gutierrez and Adrian Sutil.

It spelt disaster for Van der Garde and ultimately spelt the end of his F1 career.

Van der Garde blames his Sauber F1 career ending on one person

Asked about his short stint with the team, the 38-year-old said: “I’m still getting it from Sauber.

“It’s waiting for me and I’m also going to pick it up at the factory. The biggest culprit was team boss Monisha Kaltenborn, but all those guys who are still there now are good friends of mine.”

“We agreed that I go to the factory, that I get another tour and then we have lunch together. That suit… All those helmets and suits from the past don’t do much for me, but of course, there’s a unique story behind this.”

He ultimately turned down the opportunity, going on to say: “That working relationship was so disturbed and it’s not nice when you discover at 340kph that something is not quite right. And then you get bought off and all of a sudden you’re sitting at home.”

“I did spend a year off the map. “I really saw the black hole and it took about three-quarters of a year to get out of that.”

Monisha Kaltenborn’s time in charge of Sauber wasn’t a huge success as Van der Garde discovered.

She had been with the team since the early 2000s in various roles, but when Peter Sauber retired in 2012, Kaltenborn took charge.

During those five years before she departed the team in the middle of 2017, Sauber struggled, finishing tenth on three occasions.

That 2014 campaign saw Sauber fail to score a single point, so Van der Garde may have dodged a bullet by not being involved that year.

However, he would have liked to have spent more than just one year in F1 even if he did go on to have a successful career that saw him in the European Le Mans Series in 2016.