Joe examines the unceremonious exit of Ron Dennis.
On the Tuesday after the Brazilian Grand Prix, it was announced that Ron Dennis was being ejected from McLaren. It was no surprise for those in F1 circles that it was because Dennis refused to go gracefully. At 69 years of age, one might expect most people to bow out amid polite applause for an innings well played – but Dennis is by no means a normal human being and he left the building kicking and screaming (metaphorically speaking).
How did this earthquake in F1 come to happen? What did Dennis do wrong? The truth is not easy to find and there are lots of rumours, but the reality is that the details are not really important. The word tragedy is much misused in the modern age, but its real meaning is “a drama or literary work in which the main character is brought to ruin, especially as a consequence of a tragic flaw.”
And thus it was with Dennis!
Ron is a good man. He is kind and generous, although he does not want too many people to know this. On the other hand, he can be utterly rude and charmless, domineering and arrogant. He does not mean to be, but that is how he comes across. He is not a man who makes compromises easily. He is tough too. He came from a poor background, and it took a lot of early failure to learn the lessons required. McLaren chassis are called MP4s, followed by the type number. This stands for McLaren Project 4. Project 4 was Ron Dennis’ racing team that merged with McLaren Racing in 1980 to create McLaren International. It was called Project 4 because his early teams had failed. The first MP4 chassis was the first carbon fibre chassis in F1 history, and McLaren quickly returned to winning as a result of John Barnard’s car. What was then required was a turbocharged engine, and Dennis looked to Porsche – which agreed to provide engines if Dennis was willing to pay for them. Dennis sought out Mansour Ojjeh, who was sponsoring Williams at the time, and offered him half the business. The engines were called TAG and Dennis and Ojjeh split the business 50-50.
The TAG engine and Barnard’s chassis resulted in a period of domination unmatched in F1 history. And when the TAGs became obsolete, Dennis did a deal to get Honda engines. This led to the 1988 season when Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna produced the most successful F1 season ever seen, with 15 wins in 16 races. The winning would go on until 1993 when Honda departed, and it would take some years before McLaren returned to the winner’s circle with Mercedes in 1997. There would follow two World Championships for Mika Hakkinen in 1998 and 1999, but afterwards things became more difficult and while the team was usually competitive there was only one more title – for Lewis Hamilton in 2008. Along the way, Dennis and Ojjeh changed the shareholdings on several occasions. At the start of 2000, Daimler AG (the parent company of Mercedes-Benz) exercised an option it had been granted as part of its engine supply deal and purchased 40 percent of the team, with Dennis and Ojjeh each parting with 20 percent. There was talk of a full Mercedes takeover, but that did not happen, and at the beginning of 2007 Dennis and Ojjeh sold half of their remaining stakes to the Bahrain government investment company Mumtalakat. Thus, Daimler owned 40 percent, Mumtalakat 30 percent and Dennis and Ojjeh 15 percent each. It is believed that there was a deal for Ojjeh, Dennis and Mumtalakat to always vote together, and thus they remained in control.
McLaren made the mistake in 2009 of allowing Brawn GP to have access to Mercedes engines, and, when Brawn won the title that year, Mercedes decided that it would be better to buy Brawn GP and withdraw from McLaren ownership. Over the next two years, the McLaren shareholders bought back the Daimler shares with Mumtalakat taking an extra 20 percent and Dennis and TAG each taking 10 percent. Thus, Mumtalakat owned 50 percent, but were no longer bound to vote with Dennis, while Dennis and Ojjeh owned 25 percent apiece and continued to always vote together. The McLaren road car company was separated from the racing, and after the unpleasant Spygate Scandal in 2007, Dennis stepped back from the team and concentrated on the road car business – leaving his chosen successor Martin Whitmarsh to run the racing. There was conflict in 2012, however, when the board discussed whether or not McLaren should attend the Bahrain GP – because of the political troubles in the country. Mumtalakat wanted the race to go ahead, but Dennis thought it was a bad idea for F1 to go. Ojjeh voted with Dennis, but during that particular meeting he was the chairman of the board (as this rotated between the different players) and his casting vote went in favour of the Bahrainis. In truth, both arguments were valid. Bahrain did hurt F1’s image, but the political situation in the country did not really warrant cancellation. Unfortunately, Dennis felt betrayed by Ojjeh and it did not help that Mansour was extremely ill in the period that followed – suffering from Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), which ultimately led to a double lung transplant at the end of 2013. At the start of 2014, Dennis convinced the board to oust Whitmarsh and give him full control of the F1 team on the understanding that he would find the money to buy them out and take control of the team again. But the plans to revive the great years of McLaren-Honda have thus far failed to bear fruit. Dennis refused to budge from his sponsorship rate card, and this resulted in several of the company’s long-term backers departing because they didn’t believe that McLaren sponsorship was worth what Dennis believed it was worth. There was a chance that Apple might buy the whole business at the start of this year, but that was not completed. Ojjeh and the Bahrainis have given Ron extensions to find a backer and have always sought an amicable solution, but in the end they wanted the change and Dennis could not stop them – despite an attempt to get an injunction to stop it happening. This failed. Dennis did not want to go gracefully, and so the whole story spilled out into the public domain. Will McLaren be better off without Dennis?
Well, only time will tell…
Joe Saward has been covering Formula 1 full-time for 28 years. He has not missed a race since 1988.
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