Ron Dennis Speaks up !

Ron Dennis: I've paid the price for dedicating 30 years to Formula One

Ron Dennis vanished overnight from Formula One eight months ago. But as McLaren prepare to launch Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button in a combined bid for British supremacy, the man who built the team into the force it is today has finally broken his silence.

Dennis, now head of the McLaren division building a supercar to launch next year, has ventured back into the public eye, hinting strongly at unfair treatment from Max Mosley, the former head of the sport’s governing body, criticising his former rival team bosses and revealing the obsessions that drove him, and his team, to the top.

The 62-year-old saw his life and reputation unravel from the summer of 2007 after McLaren were fined $100million by the FIA over the ‘Spygate’ saga and his 22-year marriage to his American wife, Lisa, ended.
After almost 30 years on the Grand Prix stage, the man whose vision and dedication made world champions of Niki Lauda, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Mika Hakkinen and Hamilton, and brought him a fortune of more than £150m, was suddenly paying for his desire to win motor races, not friends.

Mosley was one of his enemies, a man with whom he constantly disagreed, disputing his dictatorial form of governance, and he leaves little room for doubt that he believes the former FIA president acted unfairly when McLaren were heavily fined for having technical data belonging to rivals, Ferrari.
Five months later, Renault, led by the flamboyant Italian Flavio Briatore, escaped punishment for the same offence, this time involving McLaren’s secrets.
‘[Spygate] was a minor indiscretion by junior members of the organisation that got amplified into a bigger issue,’ says Dennis, in an interview with Esquire magazine. It wasn’t the way it was portrayed. As always, with the passing of time, the truth will come out.
‘The bit I don’t like is when people damage the reputation of this company for reasons that have their roots in issues that relate to how fiercely I’ve fought for what I believe to be right for Formula One and McLaren. Sometimes it’s a price you wish you didn’t have to pay, but it is.’

Dennis rode out that storm, but he did not survive when McLaren became embroiled in a fresh scandal after Hamilton admitted misleading race stewards at the Australian Grand Prix. Even though Martin Whitmarsh had officially become McLaren team principal, Dennis was in the sights of his enemies.

Before the FIA hearing in Paris in mid-April, Dennis suddenly stood down as chief executive of McLaren’s F1 activities, relinquishing his role as group chairman. He insisted the decision to take personal supervision of McLaren’s new supercar was his alone. Few believed him, but McLaren escaped with a suspended three-race ban, Hamilton avoided censure and Dennis left in ignominious circumstances the sport that had been his lifeblood.
‘I can’t look at F1 without tremendous fondness, it’s given me a great life,’ he says. ‘But I find the judgmental behaviour frustrating.
‘I can sit on the pit wall and be serious, focused, and a commentator in another country says: “Oh, look at him, isn’t he miserable?” and that idea catches on. I have an amusing side to my personality, but when you’re working, you’re working.
‘I’m responsible for two lives out there and the performance of the company. When I see my opposite numbers in other teams and how ridiculously colourful and playing to the audience they are, I can’t help thinking “How on earth do you ever think you’re going to win a Grand Prix?”

‘You write down the names of all the team principals from the past 10 years and how many have won more than five races, it’s a short list. Throw some other queries at that and you’ll realise performance requires total dedication. You pay for that dedication because people misunderstand your personality and motives. That’s the price you pay, but I sleep easy.’
Dennis is a man of puzzling complexities. Famed for talking in what became known as ‘Ronspeak’ for its tortuous phrasing, his obsessive behaviour — he reputedly had the pebbles in his drive washed every month — has not lessened with success, or age.
‘I get a mental pain from looking at things that have not been properly executed,’ he says. ‘Attention to detail is fundamental to how this company has grown. I’m perceived by outsiders as being in some ivory tower.
‘I’m not, I know exactly what is going on. There are people in this organisation, and I don’t say this with any pride, who are frightened of me. That’s because they don’t understand me.
‘I used to go to bed with the vacuum cleaner going because my mum wanted the house immaculate when she got up. That’s the ethos I grew up with, everything had to be perfect all the time. That’s why I am such a pain to live with. I don’t want chaos; my homes are my tranquillity bases.’

The painful breakdown of his marriage to Lisa, with whom he has three children, has led him to buy a home in London and finding, with the help of a friend who is a magazine editor, a new lifestyle.
‘I’ve changed my life and I’ve been helped back into a social circle which didn’t see me as some poor old wrinkly stood in a nightclub, but more out there enjoying life.
‘My priority is still my kids, but when my kids are out doing stuff I go out and do stuff, too.’
Dennis can see a kindred spirit in Michael Schumacher, returning to F1 with Mercedes at the age of 42, and he will doubtless miss not being on the pit wall in Bahrain on March 14 as Hamilton and Button, the last two world champions, seek to deny the German, a seven-time title winner, a fairytale comeback.

Ironically, Dennis never tried to sign Schumacher. Perhaps after dealing with the egocentric genius of Senna, he was unwilling to put himself through the mill a second time.
He certainly invested emotionally in his drivers’ careers. He describes his relationship with Hamilton, whom he groomed to be champion from the age of 12, as ‘paternal’.
But for Senna, he admits his regard ‘edged on almost masculine love’. I use the word quite deliberately,’ he adds. ‘It didn’t have any homosexuality about it, it wasn’t that sort [of love].’
After the sacrifices Dennis has made in his career and personal life, he confesses to having few friends. ‘I have less than 10,’ he says. ‘Friendship is just part of the mix that determines whether you’re happy or not.’

For nearly 30 years, Formula One was also part of that mix. Now Dennis is facing up to new challenges

By Malcolm Folley