Last December, we wrote that the Williams team won a lawsuit against former title sponsor, ROKiT, that failed to meet its obligations and was ordered to pay the team $32.2 million plus an additional $1 million in legal fees.
Now Rokit is suing the team for $149 million in damages. Rokit lawyers claim Williams assured them it was building a competitive car when they agreed title sponsorship for 2019, but ended the season in last place in the Constructors’ Championship, negatively impacting the company’s reputation.
Rokit claims that “around January 18, 2019 at Williams Engineering’s headquarters in Grove” the team told its representatives that their new car “has better performance, has a Mercedes-Benz powerplant and has an excellent chance of competing at the top of the Constructors’ Championship. , and will be no slower than a 2018 Williams car.” The team also revealed that they have hired Paddy Lowe from Mercedes to help them develop.
Rokit claims that Williams did not have the money to develop a competitive car, and that the team “deliberately and fraudulently concealed this fact”.
Defendants in the case, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, are former deputy chief Claire Williams, Mike O’Driscoll and Doug Lafferty, the team’s chief executive and chief financial officer.
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
