The departure of McLaren's strange colossus

Just as I still struggle to take on board that Bernie Ecclestone is no longer running Formula 1, so it's difficult to believe that the ties between Ron Dennis and McLaren are now officially severed.

After being put on 'gardening leave' by his fellow shareholders last autumn, Dennis could have accepted a few hundred million for his shares, and gone quietly, but the streetfighter in him - never far from the surface - won the day, and he sued the company with which he had been synonymous for so long.

It was ill-advised, and somewhat lacking in dignity, but Ron invariably put principle - or what he saw as principle - ahead of anything else. If he thought he was in the right - something from the cradle he believed to be the case in all matters - he invariably passed up the opportunity to keep shtum.

I remember an Autosport Awards evening in London 20-odd years ago, when Dennis was interviewed towards the end. Time has blurred the memory of what was his beef of the moment with the powers-that-be - there was always something - but after receiving his award he started to change the subject, and the tone of the evening. "I know I probably shouldn't bring this up, but..." he began, and Gerhard Berger, sitting next to me, groaned: "Don't do it, Ron, don't do it..."

He did, of course, because he couldn't help himself, and although this was neither the time or place for a sour discourse on Formula 1 politics, he went on at some length. Only when the huge room eventually began to slow-handclap did he reluctantly desist.

As quite often with RD, you knew why he was upset about this or that, and had some sympathy for him, but that would be washed away by towering arrogance. "We make history - you just write about it," he said to us at the McLaren motorhome one day. I don't think any journalist present ever forgot that.

To no one's surprise, save perhaps his own, Dennis failed in his legal action against McLaren late last year, and once that had happened it was surely inevitable that sooner or later the other shareholders - Mumtalakat (always known in the business as 'the Bahrainis') and Mansour Ojjeh - would buy him out. Now, after 37 years, Dennis no longer has any connection with McLaren.

He is, I think, one of the strangest people I have ever known - complex, obsessive, socially gauche, in equal measure kind and ruthless, gregarious and aloof. It may be said that down the years he has been admired more than loved, an impression amplified by talking with past McLaren drivers, but not even his most earnest detractor could deny that his achievements have been remarkable.

The team Dennis took over in 1980 was becalmed, but within four years it was dominant, and if this were not down to Ron alone, more than anything else it was his drive and vision that transformed McLaren into a powerhouse. Over time Niki Lauda, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Mika Hakkinen and Lewis Hamilton all won titles with the team.

Although Dennis would probably take issue, most would contend that his major failing was what amounted to a genius for falling out with people, most notably Daimler Benz, at one time a very significant investor in McLaren as well as its longtime F1 'engine partner', and Ojjeh, whom Ron had coaxed away from Williams. Beyond their professional association, the two men became close friends, and their eventual falling out - for more than business reasons - stunned the paddock.

Formula 1 has never been short of driven people, but Dennis was more compulsive than most.

"When you're growing up," he once said to me, "embarrassments tend to stick, and there are some moments - in my case, fewer than five in my entire life - which really register. When I was about seven, for example, I remember watching a male ballet dancer on TV, and saying, 'I could do that, if I wanted to'. My brother and sister laughed at me, but I had this 'I'll show you' thing even then.

"In the same way, I remember going to a coffee bar in Woking, and saying to my friends, 'I'm going to go into motor racing'. Of course there were peals of laughter, but again it was 'I'll show you', and it's never left me."

Nor will it, one imagines, but for all his quirks and mannerisms, Ron Dennis has been a colossus of the sport, and history will remember him so. At last weekend's Festival of Speed at Goodwood, there he was among the great and good, participating in the tribute to Bernie Ecclestone organised by Lord March.

One way and another, deja vu hung heavy in the air, a sense of changing times, and it was personified by an awkward hug between Ecclestone and Chase Carey: one thought of boxers touching gloves.

In a recent chat with Bernie, I mentioned that last autumn the assumption was that he would work with Liberty for a while.

"That was what I thought, too," said Bernie, "because it was what they'd asked me to do, for three years. Then Chase asked me to meet him, and after telling me they'd completed the deal with CVC, he said, 'We'd like you to step down as chief executive - because I want to occupy that position'.

"It was something I hadn't really thought about - but quite obviously they had, because within half an hour they had a document ready for me to sign!"

Surely, I said, bearing in mind that your contacts are unequalled, and all the deals currently in place were done by you, would not a 'handing over' period have been logical, with Liberty keeping you on board for a while?

"Yes," said Bernie, "but... the Americans say they don't need help, so we'll see. It's their car now, isn't it? They bought it, and they want to drive it. I just hope they don't crash..."