Ron Dennis is unapologetic as he vows to take McLaren back on the road to winning.<\/p>\n
With the great British team just fifth overall in 2013, 66-year-old supremo Dennis wrestled back control from Martin Whitmarsh and trotted out the old line about even second place being “the first of the losers”.<\/p>\n
“Of course, I have a lot of respect for the people in our team but they were distracted, not focused enough,” he told reporters.<\/p>\n
Some believe Whitmarsh, who it is believed is not speaking to the media while his payout is negotiated, was regarded as ‘too nice’ to effectively run a F1 team.<\/p>\n
“Martin is a friend,” Dennis insisted.\u00a0 “We did not fall out.\u00a0 Some decisions you take in life are not that easy, and I will not elaborate.”<\/p>\n
What Dennis has found in Whitmarsh’s wake, however, is the loss of Lewis Hamilton and title sponsor Vodafone, and Whitmarsh’s new management pick, Eric Boullier.<\/p>\n
Dennis insisted, however, that he separately also approached Frenchman Boullier, the former Lotus boss.<\/p>\n
“For some time I had been discussing with the shareholders that things were not working,” he said.<\/p>\n
Another perhaps not entirely Dennis-esque choice was the rookie Dane Kevin Magnussen, son of the erratic former McLaren test driver Jan.<\/p>\n
“I had reservations (about Kevin),” Dennis admitted.<\/p>\n
“I’m not a great believer in sons of drivers,” he added, but he thinks Kevin’s “steely determination” will result in “an exceptional career”.<\/p>\n
So the new Dennis era has begun, and a first major input has been to turn down some “stopgap” solutions following title sponsor Vodafone’s exit.<\/p>\n
“I strongly believe we are (like) Manchester United,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Inevitably, when you have a run of poor results, people push the rate card down.<\/p>\n
“But I know what this company is and what this grand prix team can achieve, and that requires the correct recognition from and close relationship with a principal sponsor,” said Dennis.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ron Dennis is unapologetic as he vows to take McLaren back on the road to winning. With the great British team just fifth overall in 2013, 66-year-old supremo Dennis wrestled back control from Martin Whitmarsh and trotted out the old line about even second place being “the first of the losers”. “Of course, I have …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[251,5262,5340,3596,491,5284,880],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21189"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21189"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21190,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21189\/revisions\/21190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}