Hakkinen Return Will be a Team Decision

Mika Hakkinen may decide to make a Formula One comeback next season but the Finn can take nothing for granted.

However Ireland's World Cup team can count on the support of Ron Dennis, even though the McLaren boss says he knows nothing about soccer. The two may not appear to have much in common but Dennis found a connecting thread as he celebrated his team's first win of the season in Monaco at the weekend.

Asked whether there was an obligation to provide former champion Hakkinen with a car should he seek to return to McLaren after a year out, Dennis replied: "No. It's not the way it works.

"There's nothing automatic about it. If Mika wants to drive then it's for us to decide if that's the right thing for the team. Mika, David (Coulthard), Kimi (Raikkonen) and anyone who drives for the team understands that they are an integral part of it but they are not the sole and exclusive part.

"The team is run...by its management, not by its players or particular drivers. I have absolutely zero knowledge of football, zero knowledge," continued Dennis.

"But when I was watching at a distance the antics of the Irish football team and the stance the management took on their player, irrespective of his competence, I think it was the right decision. At the end of the day, the judgement of success or failure always falls on management."

Harmony

Irish captain Roy Keane, Ireland's best player, was sent home in disgrace from Japan last week by manager Mick McCarthy after a bust-up between the two over the way the team was preparing for the tournament. Dennis had no sympathy for the player.

"A team is about balance, it's about harmony and it's about trying to give and take," he said. "It's certainly not about any one individual dictating terms and conditions, whether it's a driver or fullback, striker or goalkeeper.

"A team sport is just that - a team sport."

Sunday's Monaco Grand Prix was the first that Hakkinen had attended since he began his year's break in October.

The Finn told reporters there that he still had several weeks to make his mind up about a comeback but he expected it to be with McLaren if he did return. Dennis said the success in Monaco was most unlikely to influence Hakkinen's thinking.

"I don't think any singular race is going to have any dramatic influence because he understands Formula One," he told reporters in the Grand Prix paddock.

"Mika's decision will be made during the course of the next few weeks and I don't think anything that happens this week or this year has any influence on that decision."