Force India will pay £650,000 to Caterham and Mike Gascoyne

In fact, his team will have to pay £400,000 to its former technical director Mike Gascoyne and £250,000 to his new employer, while settling its debts with Aerolab. It will also have to cover all the legal fees incurred by this case.

While the Silverstone team believed it was within its rights to sue the team that was still called Team Lotus for violating its intellectual property by using certain computer files through its former supplier Aerolab, it now faces a significant bill to settle.

By the end of March, she had already been ordered to repay the entirety of her debt to the Italian wind tunnel, amounting to a check of £820,000. All that remained was to settle the costs related to other parties involved in the case, primarily Mike Gascoyne and 1 Malaysia Racing, the parent company of the Caterham team. Indeed, it was the dismissal of the former and his recruitment by Tony Fernandes that triggered the entire legal battle that followed.

The High Court in London effectively acknowledged that Aerolab had taken a shortcut by using pre-existing files for the design dedicated to Lotus, but no systematic copying had been implemented to take advantage of the work done for Force India. The financial compensation is thus merely symbolic, as Aerolab is only ordered to pay 25,000 euros compared to the 13 million claimed by Force India.

Nevertheless, this amount pales in comparison to the £650,000 she will have to pay her rivals in the next two weeks… It remains to be seen if Force India will appeal again, risking making the legal bill even worse.

With the participation of RacingBusiness.fr