Ron Dennis: Understanding the Mind of a Genius, Part I

Ron Denis' long career in Formula 1 has been nothing short of extraordinary; from humble beginnings as a young mechanic, fighting his way to the top and in the process establishing McLaren Mercedes as one of the most succesful team to have ever braced the formula 1 rounds in its short 50 years of existence.

 Ron Denis has experience and cunning the likes of which are very difficult to imagine. Nobody last year would have expected that beneath the shadows of the whole turmoils within the Mclaren team as a result of the spy scandal and the relationship breakdown between Fernando Alonso (then world champion and No:1 driver for McLaren) and the team; there was one man laughing his way to the banks and that was Ron Denis this article looks at the way this genius of a man could litterally take over formula 1 and the rest of motorsports as FIA president and more!!!

Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton: the hidden game plan

Mc Laren back in 2006 fought extremely hard to secure the services of the then double world champion, pace setter and man to beat Fernando Alonso; that is such a long gone era but why then were they (McLaren) happy to let Alonso leave at the end of his first year of his contract? Well to answer this question we need to look at it differently, Mclaren as a team benefited from Alonso; if you think about it he did bring a sheer amount of inputs to the team making the car faster and also forcing the beast of a driver out of Lewis Hamilton. If you believe otherwise you may be in for a surprise as this is exactly what Ron Denis had expected or rather engineered  and had it was all planned from day one; Ron knew what he was getting himself into, the team and the rest of formula 1 into and this nobody seems to have picked up.

Ron Dennis was 100 percent confident of Lewis Hamilton's potential (i.e. being able to challenge for the title) and loyalty to McLaren (i.e. having worked so many years with the team even Ferrari could never get him) the only missing factor was a strong motivator to unleash that potential early; and that motivator was found and brought to the Woking based team in the form of a multimillion pound 3 year contract with Fernando Alonso;

and again considering his experience of having managed Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna when they were running for Mc Laren in 1993 Ron more than anyone else understood the Alonso-Hamilton relationship would blow up sooner or later for the era of running two top drivers in the same team is just fancy wishful thinking, it just does not work. Dennis knew this and that enabled him to calculate that by the time Alonso would lose his kool, Hamilton would by then have achieved the level of driving that was expected of him and that's exactly what happened. The rest is history because with Hamilton fully developed and both championships open for the taking Ron Denis put his McLaren team in a very strong position as a matter of fact Ferrari won the manufacturer championships in the court but then again Ron understood this would happen and see part II of this note if you want insights as to why the Mclaren Boss was ready to make that sort of sacrifice...

 Ron Denis is a political genius and he fooled everyone into believing he was the one being played around by both the FIA and his drivers relationship toward one another! What he holds for us is unknown however his involvement in formula 1 has been very positive so far!

 Part  II  will look into the future of the man and why the spy scandal played in the hands of Ron Dennis.

To be continued