Ron Dennis Q&A

The US GP could hardly have gone better for McLaren, as Mika Hakkinen notched up the team's first win since his own success at Silverstone back in July. The result secured second place in the constructors' championship. For obvious reasons it was important for the Finn to show he still means business by putting in such a strong performance with his 'sabbatical' fast approaching, but it was good for the team to put one over on Ferrari even though the championship was lost long ago. The only sour note was a penalty that dropped Mika from second to fourth on the grid after he missed a red light at the pit exit in the warm-up, and his best qualifying time was annulled. But that may well have served to fire him up even more... Adam Cooper heard what Ron Dennis had to say

"It was a good race, and I'm very happy for the team. Obviously Mika drove well, but the strategy was perfect, and we're delighted with the outcome."

Q: You needed it, didn't you?

"Needed is the wrong word. We come to every race and try to win it, and we've achieved our objective, so we've just done our job. That's what we're here for."

"No. People don't seem to realise that this was a decision pretty much taken in May. We only shared it with the world in Monza, because we had to put other things in place. So he's been pretty relaxed for quite a while. We came here with a commitment to win, as we always do, and I think we did a good job."

"We come to every race feeling that, otherwise why come?"

"We don't ever think about it in that way. We come to every race and we just to try to win it. Sometimes you don't win, but you come second and come away feeling very satisfied because you've made the best out of a difficult situation. Here I think that we had the pace in qualifying. The times changing this morning was difficult to accept - I think it was a severe judgement. But at the end of the day it didn't influence the result."

"It was frustrating for reasons I'd rather not share..."

"Yeah, but as I said, it's nice to have it, but second isn't anything. You either win or you don't win."

"I think we conceived it well, and we executed well."

"Everyone thought we'd made a mistake in choosing the softer option, but in fact we felt pretty comfortable that as long as we didn't push too hard at the beginning, and brought the tyres in pretty carefully, then they'd be fine. And they were."

"It's good to come out of this race with an up. It creates new momentum and motivation in the company, and that's beneficial. I'm delighted also for the people here. It was really quite a good race, there was plenty going on, fantastic weather, and I think everybody enjoyed it."

"I think when you go through life and you take decisions, when you've made a commitment, you stick by it. I completely supported it when we took it, and time will tell if it's the right thing."