Giedo van der Garde claims he turned down the chance to stay at Caterham this year in order to “move sideways” to Sauber.<\/p>\n
Just a year into his grand prix career, the Dutchman will not even be on the 2014 grid, but serving only as Sauber’s reserve and occasional Friday driver.<\/p>\n
Well backed by his father in law Marcel Boekhoorn’s McGregor brand, he told De Telegraaf newspaper that he turned Caterham down.<\/p>\n
“I liken it to Jasper Cillissen,” van der Garde said, referring to a Dutch goalkeeper who gambled on a transfer between football teams, sat on the bench for a year but ultimately went on to great success.<\/p>\n
De Telegraaf said van der Garde was offered the race seat at Caterham for 2014.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t do it,” the 28-year-old confirmed, “because this is a better option.<\/p>\n
“My goal this year is to show what I can do and race for Sauber in 2015.\u00a0 I’m a driver who wants the maximum possible, not to race around at the back.”<\/p>\n
Van der Garde said he is happy with his 2014 programme.<\/p>\n
“It looks good,” he said.\u00a0 “There are more test days this year and I can do some of the Friday free practices.<\/p>\n
“And if it is necessary, I am ready to race.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Giedo van der Garde claims he turned down the chance to stay at Caterham this year in order to “move sideways” to Sauber. Just a year into his grand prix career, the Dutchman will not even be on the 2014 grid, but serving only as Sauber’s reserve and occasional Friday driver. Well backed by his …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[3605,5262,5340,2286,1767],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20768"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20768"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20769,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20768\/revisions\/20769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}