The Weekly Grapevine

The Dennis Enigma

Will it be all change at McLaren this year?

Already reeling from a headline-grabbing US$100m fine and the global shame associated with its uncontested conviction by the FIA in September last year, the team seems set to be hit by upheaval in Ron Dennis' personal life, and a rumoured 'side-step' by the man who pulled himself up by his bootstraps to go from apprentice mechanic to become chairman of one of the sport's iconic teams.

Whilst analysis of Dennis domestic situation has no place in these pages - despite the fact that such crises invariably impact on professional commitments, and are therefore bound to affect Formula One in some way or other - his much-rumoured pending retirement is sure to change the face of the sport, certainly in the short term.

Whilst his retirement has been oft-discussed in F1 circles - with such talk regularly fuelled by his own admissions that numerous non-motorsport objectives lay unfulfilled - serious suggestions that Dennis was about to take leave of a Formula One paddock were generally taken lightly by the media unless sensational headlines were being sought. And then the headlines were consistently proven wrong.

Ron Dennis © LAT

Here was, after all, a man who had worked in F1 since the age of 19, and starting as a mechanic for the likes of Jack Brabham and Jochen Rindt. But, being an employee, one who got greasy in the course of his duties to boot, always was going to be beneath the station of this highly motivated individual who remains an absolute stickler for detail, and soon Ron Dennis set up his own F2 team.

With a couple of thousand of quid between them, Dennis, who bred birds as a hobby and showed no early interest in motorsport save for enjoying odd runs in hire kart, and former Brabham colleague Neil Trundle rented two Brabhams and went racing - with double world champion Graham Hill, in 1970 just two past his final title! Hill won the team's second race...

Dennis' cars were always pristine, and over the years many a tale of the man's almost obsessive attention to the microscopic has been told, with none illustrating this trait better than that from a laundryman in Woking, where McLaren was based until two years ago.

"Best account I have, McLaren," the cleaner admitted in 1995 before explaining that he was (exceedingly) well remunerated to clean already clean (yes) clothes. "They send me all these clean clothes to clean after a race weekend, and when I checked, they said the boss-man wants all clothes to fade at exactly the same rate so they look the same. So, worn or unworn, I have to wash 'em weekly."

McLaren was then, of course, sponsored by Marlboro (in one of sport most enduring sponsorship deals) and the sight of unequally faded red trousers and jackets apparently drove Dennis into a state bordering on apoplexy - so the solution was simple: wash then all together regardless...

Two further 'projects' followed Dennis' initial F2 forays before Project Four propelled Dennis on his way to Formula One team boss in his own right.

In addition to successfully entering F2 cars, Project Four did three crucial things: it ran a Marlboro-backed BMW M1 in the Pro-Car series for Niki Lauda, having built 30 such cars on BMW's behalf, and it employed the equally detail-obsessed John Barnard.

The designer, formerly with a McLaren then sliding down the grid, was desperate to produce an F1 car produced from carbon-fibre, and Marlboro, becoming increasingly disillusioned with McLaren's then-management, forced a merger between the two in 1980. Such was his ability that by the end of 1982 Woking-born Dennis was the majority shareholder in McLaren.

He found the funding for the chassis and a complementary engine (designed and built by Porsche), and within two years Lauda scored the first of the nine world drivers' and seven constructors' titles the team was to win under Dennis - a formidable record, one which places McLaren second on the all-time list when added to the two and one respectively won under previous team principal Teddy Mayer.

Niki Lauda (McLaren MP4/2 TAG Porsche) 1984 French Grand Prix, Dijon-Prenois © LAT

McLaren's golden years were, without doubt 1988-91, when the team creamed everything in sight, and built the world's best sports car to boot. Dennis' management skills were pushed to the limit by the shenanigans of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, but his efforts went well rewarded: in 1988 they won 15 out of 16 grands prix, just missing a full house through a collision with a backmarker.

Over the years, though, the team had its ups and downs - one thinks immediately of the mid-nineties, when in quick succession Senna departed, the team was reduced to running Peugeot power and the team built a car two sizes smaller than Nigel Mansell's posterior - but always the team regrouped and came back, with Mika Hakkinen taking back-to-back titles in 1998/9.

A measure of the team's struggle since, though, is that its last constructors' title came in 1998 - a full decade ago - with the last drivers' title coming the next year.

Where once Dennis was respected for his management skills (and was honoured for these), the fact remains that since the departure of Hakkinen, with whom he enjoyed a close relationship after the Finn suffered a life-threatening crash in 1995, his relations with drivers have been rather tetchy.

Whether it be Juan Pablo Montoya, Kimi Raikkonen or Fernando Alonso - vastly different characters all - none says a good word about their former boss despite scoring victories and two of the trio coming exceedingly close to championships with his team.

The burning question thus is whether they three marched out of step, or whether Dennis simply failed to grasp the different needs of drivers in the 21st century.

The time for his philosophy of equality for both drivers (was it, though, a slip of the tongue or mockery of his own doctrine that led him to say 'we - for which read McLaren and Lewis Hamilton - weren't racing Kimi, we were basically racing Fernando' in China?) too, seems to have come.

Whilst he can hold up professed equal treatment of Prost and Senna in those glory years as successful examples of this approach, this argument overlooks the technical superiority his drivers enjoyed.

Where the opposition is formidable it stands to reason that a single driver enjoying his team's full focus will gain the upper hand in the championship - exactly the motivation a driver needs - and exactly why McLaren has at times won more races than the opposition, yet lost the championship battle.

The McLaren Technology Centre © McLaren

The role of McLaren's Technology Centre, which stands both as monument to the man's enormous lifetime achievements and as architectural masterpiece, also needs questioning: is this ultra-sanitary building really conducive to creating the sort of rarefied atmosphere in which truly great automotive engineers thrive?

Compare the patchwork facilities McLaren inhabited in a Woking industrial suburb and the titles and trophies delivered by various buildings in the imaginatively named Albert Road to those delivered by lush 'Paragon'; equally, consider Ferrari's recent record and its scattered factories in dreamy Maranello...

Then there is the relative failure of the Mercedes McLaren SLR, which has hardly set the sports car market alight with rumours of heavy discounts abounding, and whilst it is hardly a McLaren product in the F1 road car mould, it was nonetheless created in-house by the highly-regarded Gordon Murray and his team, and is produced there (in diminishing numbers) on behalf of 40 percent shareholder Mercedes.

McLaren's rumoured own sports car seems to have been put on ice for a while (if not ever), probably whilst the damage to McLaren's post-spy scandal reputation is assessed, and with Murray having opened in business for his own account, doubts now exist about the design's future.

Could this lack of tangible results, coupled with corporate difficulties, be the cause of the potential side- (or down-) stepping of a 61-year-old master of the business, one who as recently as September professed to still being in love with grand prix racing?

Or do other reasons exists for growing rumours that he will not grace McLaren's pit wall perch as team principal come the Australian Grand Prix?

Searches for incriminating 'Spygate' material conducted by the Italian police, working in conjunction with Surrey's constabulary, whilst embarrassing, have long been on the cards, so these could hardly be the sole reason, although they surely are concentrating Dennis' mind at present.

He wears three different McLaren 'hats' in the course of his executive duties: Chairman, McLaren Group; Chief Executive Officer, McLaren Group; Team Principal, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes, and, having sold 35 percent of the company of which he once 50 percent owned (Mansour Ojjeh held the balance, and has similarly reduced his holding in terms of a mutual pact), he has two major shareholders to consider.

These are, of course, Mercedes-Benz (40 percent) and The Bahrain Mumtalakat Holding Company with 30 percent, and whilst both have expressed their confidence in Dennis despite 'Spygate', they can hardly have been enthralled by the situation. But, as a shareholder he cannot be summarily dismissed, regardless of intra-group politics.

Ron Dennis and Martin Whitmarsh © XPB/LAT

Some suggested last year that Dennis' departure from the group at the height of investigations would result in a lessening of sanctions against the company by the sport's governing body, but still he clung on doggedly, professing his team's overall innocence until the last.

Interestingly, though, not a single head has rolled at McLaren since the scandal broke despite some conflicting statements by some of the players involved, despite admissions made during pleas to the FIA by Group CEO Martin Whitmarsh in December.

So, could Dennis really be planning to bear the full brunt of 'Spygate' by leaving the company he created unto his own image - an entity he loves almost more than all else in life - by stepping down or away from the company which made him a stratospherically wealthy man and in which he still owns 15 percent?

Hardly likely: Dennis has proven to be a fighter all his life, one who fought back from a serious car accident in the seventies, and will hardly back out now.

More likely he will stand down from his team principal role only, whilst continuing in the other two capacities. This will permit him to reduce his normally intensive travel load whilst remaining back at base in order deal with the inevitable fall-out.

Australia will tell...