JULY 31, 2012

Anthony Hamilton takes Di Resta to court

BY TONY DODGINS (@TonyDodgins)

The details of the rift between Force India driver Paul Di Resta and Lewis Hamilton's father Anthony, his manager until earlier this year, have emerged in London's High Court. Hamilton Sr is pursuing a case for wrongful termination of contract and loss of earnings.

Daily Telegraph F1 correspondent Tom Cary reports that Di Resta's defence papers, lodged with the court yesterday, allege that the Scot was misled over a lucrative sponsorship deal with emergy drink company Go Fast.

Di Resta alleges that the deal, worth almost $7m minus commission, was set up by his friend Jordan Wise and that he took it to Hamilton at the end of last year, whereupon Hamilton said that it would be a sound move to buy Di Resta's sports drinks right from his team, Force India.

Di Resta alleges that he was told that the cost of doing that would be almost $2.5m but that when he made his own enquiries with Force India earlier this year, he was told by the team that the rights were worth only half of that. He then made the decision to terminate his contract with Hamilton.

There has been no comment from either Di Resta or Hamilton but it is understood that the latter strongly denies any wrongdoing.

The dispute is said to have caused a degree of bad feeling towards Di Resta from Lewis Hamilton, who is understood to be be on good terms with his father again after himself switching management from Anthony to Simon Fuller's X1X Entertainment organisation.

Di Resta, who has impressed in his first two F1 seasons, it is at an important stage of his career as he seeks a move to a front-running team. The situation has become potentially more sensitive since the Scot started taking arms-length advice from The Sports Partnership, a management company run by Hamilton's McLaren team Jenson Button and Button's manager, Richard Goddard.