marcush. wrote:Dennis persuaded a lot of People to do things unimaginable for others. He lured away Dr.zucker from Bosch and now Mclaren is a top brand in Terms of electronics -be it sensors ,ECUs ,data Aquisition,calibration. He made Mansour ojjeh pay for the Porsche turboengine ,buying into Mclaren ,financing the first roadcar Project F1 , got first Barnard,than Murray,then Newey to build the very best machinery ...You got to show respect for that old spannerman who was chief mechanic in Jack brabhams Team.
Starting in Motorsports with Cooper in 1966 he had his own Team (Rondel) attempting to compete in Formula 1 in 1973 ,the Project was stopped and the assets sold to Graham Hill who started his own F1team venture with that base.
but impressingly Ron was back in F1 with his Project Four Racing in 1981 taking over Mclaren in the same go.
Back then in the late 1970s I remember Rons F2 Outfit running Ralt and March machinery .The Team always had Ultra clean Paddock presence ,everything was worlds apart from the rest in Terms of presentation and professionalism....You could see them going places.Later they did the procar series preparing a fleet of BMW M1s and obviously Ron made good Connections in those days with BMW -as they later supplied a brilliant engine for the Mclaren roadcar Project...
Ron is a racer and a very very tough competitor and manager as hard to his employees as he is to himself -wich is ok but in our modern world maybe a bit unususal.
I can respect achievements. I just don't much like the way he does things - fully aware that a comment like this shouldn't be near a technical forum. I have no doubt Macca will do better under his reign, it is just that my love for Mclaren was stronger when he wasn't around. Like I said earlier, for me Whitmarsh and Brawn is dream team, I'm one of those who thinks that the Mercedes structure of separating technical and the more PR side of things is a good thing.
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