Ron Dennis once referred to Eddie Jordan as Formula 1’s “village idiot” but that has not stopped the Irishman from praising the former McLaren supremo, suggesting that the Woking outfit needs him back at the helm as Zak Brown’s five-year plan to revive the team’s fortunes in top flight looks set to flop.
In 2018 Brown laid out a detailed five-year plan to get McLaren to the top of F1 again and back to winning ways, but that self-imposed deadline is over at the end of this season, and it is clear it has failed. Instead of a winning team in top flight, where it matters, Brown turned the team colonial, expanding their involvement into numerous campaigns including IndyCar and Formula E, which does not matter for die-hard McLaren fans raised on the massive F1 successes during Dennis’ reign at Woking.
Brown, who would make someone rich if every time he paid a dollar for saying he and his mates are “racers” as if anyone outside of Zak-world is not a racer, as if everyone at Mercedes and Red Bull and Ferrari… and Williams, for example, are not “racers”? Aren’t we all “racers” in varying degrees?
What McLaren needs are not a bunch of Zak’s “racers” but rather real “winners” which the Dennis era was packed with, because for Ron there was no alternative to winning in F1, and winning in style, the McLaren way. That’s how that team grew its fanbase, its unique brand.
Coulthard: Ron was misunderstood by McLaren outsiders
Ex-McLaren driver David Coulthard and F1 team owner Eddie Jordan, recalled working with Dennis, now 75-years-old, during a recent Formula For Success podcast by Whisper.
Speaking of his former boss, Coulthard said: “Ron Dennis was misunderstood to the outside world because he was an incredibly caring individual to the team and took care of his team personnel if they had medical issues or their family had issues. He took care of them quietly, but in a great way because he understood the importance of the team.”
Jordan, who ran his own F1 team from 1991 to 2005 [today it’s Aston Martin] echoed Coulthard with his recollections of the time: “Ron was a perfectionist wasn’t he? He just had everything planned. He wanted the Sennas, he wanted the Prosts.
“To be fair, we all laughed and joked, we took the mickey out of Ron a little bit because of how clinical he is, both in cleanliness and the way he prepares the car and the people, but I bet they wish they had him back because McLaren now is nowhere near where they were.
“You can say what you like, Ron Dennis was just fantastically dedicated and committed to his team and the unsung hero to the staff members and people at McLaren,” added Jordan.
Under Dennis’ watch, from 1980 McLaren won 157 Grands Prix, seven F1 Constructors’ Titles plus ten F1 drivers Titles, with legendary drivers Niki Lauda, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna and Mika Hakkinen. He also ‘discovered’ and financed Lewis Hamilton’s junior career before turning the Englishman into the 2008 World Champion.
McLaren changed leadership in 2017, goodbye Ron, hello Zak
By the time Dennis’ contract with McLaren expired in January 2017, an acrimonious split was inevitable, and in June 2017 he agreed to sell his remaining shares in both the McLaren Technology Group and McLaren Automotive. And has never been seen in F1 circles since.
In stark contrast, his successor Brown talks the talk but is yet to deliver, let alone fill the big shoes that Dennis left behind. If Ron turned McLaren into an exclusive five-star Hilton, Zak refurbished and franchised the brand into a three-star Holiday Inn.
And the American marketing guru, petrolhead, team owner (other than McLaren), driver manager and whatever else, is proud of the downgrading it seems, as he put it: “McLaren is built of a bunch of racers [that word again!] so like me, anytime they can turn on the TV and see a McLaren at the front, they get excited.”
What McLaren was always about under Ron, was regularly winning in F1, nothing else mattered. Now us old McLaren fans shake our heads and wonder where Brown is leading F1’s second-most successful team, as his five-year plan (trumpeting F1 front-running by around this time) has bombed; ask their two talented lads in Papaya colours, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.
Racing in other series are cheap thrills for McLaren folks who forget the F1 winning machine Ron’s team was
The victory count for Brown in his near five years in charge is the fortuitous one scored by Daniel Ricciardo at Monza in 2021, a total of nine podiums in that period makes for sad reading when under Dennis, McLaren celebrated 410 podiums, 157 times taking home the victory trophy.
Furthermore, in the five or so years Brown has been in charge at Woking the team has floundered, more so now since Andreas Seidl jumped ship at the end of last season, James Key chosen as the fall guy, and top McLaren staff eying the door according to more than one insider.
Consider that in 1980, when Dennis took over McLaren from Teddy Meyer, the team Bruce built was not in a good place, pretty much like it is now, rudderless, aimless and winless in F1. And while Ron never made a noise about a five-year-plans you can bet he had a plan, because within a year of him taking over what was a beleaguered team, he turned them into winners, and by year four they won their first double – F1 Drivers’ and Constructors’ Champions in the same year.
They followed that with another one-two in the F1 Championship, the following year, and with it Dennis set the template of how McLaren should operate to win in F1, in a motorsport landscape where nothing else should matter for the sport’s second most successful Grand Prix team.
They are nowhere near that anymore, and perhaps less so than ever before under the current regime, begging the question: how long will 51-year-old Zak Brown last as McLaren boss?