Final pit stop for McLaren boss Dennis
RON DENNIS is preparing to bow to the pressures of McLaren’s agonies and end his figurehead role with the team before the new season begins in just over two weeks.
The Woking-based team, which Dennis built into one of the most successful in grand prix racing, scorned suggestions from Spain yesterday the 60-year-old had been forced to quit because of his role in what the sport’s governing body saw as a cover-up in the investigations into stolen Ferrari material last season.
With he and his long-standing friend and co-owner Mansour Ojjeh still holding 30 per cent of the shares Dennis can hardly be fired, but there are open wounds from losing the espionage battle with the FIA and Ferrari which cost the team so much and damaged his public reputation.
Mercedes are dismayed with the outcome of the FIA hearings which ripped the team’s integrity apart, saw it thrown out of the constructors’ championship, which they would have won, fined £50million and then losing the drivers’ title race at the final grand prix.
World champion Fernando Alonso quit the team after a year of battles with McLaren and Lewis Hamilton and at the launch of the 2008 car, held for the first time at Mercedes headquarters in Stuggart, Dennis had a much smaller role than usual.
Dennis started in F1 as a mechanic and, after merging his junior outfit with McLaren, he made it one of the greats.
Awarded a CBE, he moved the company, which employs 1,300 and builds the £300,000 Mercedes SLR super sports cars, to a £300m headquarters. Dennis said last year before the explosion of bad publicity: “There are other things in life I would like to explore but when I stop coming to races that will be it. It would have to be a full-stop.”
He has groomed his successor, Martin Whitmarsh, the chief executive officer, to run the F1 team and he may soon do in reality. The team look ready to compete with Ferrari again as the last F1 test showed in Barcelona.
Hamilton, fastest for two days, managed just 200 metres at the start of the final session before his car broke down and he finished 10th.
Jarno Trulli’s Toyota finished on top with a lightweight, fast run staged as a morale-booster, David Coulthard had a good second in the Red Bull but it was another long day for Jenson Button’s Honda.
Alonso, seventh, continues his sniping at Hamilton, insisting he has only himself to blame for recent abuse at a Barcelona test.
Hamilton said last month that Alonso had shown him “just how not to behave as a world champion” and Alonso responded: “I didn’t take any notice but the very next week they whistled him in Spain for saying that. If you talk like that, it’s no wonder they jeer you.”
Sourc: Daily Express
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