- 25 Nov 13, 01:18#382232
2014 Monster 26x Bookie Mugger
2015, 2016 WDC: LH44
Ron Dennis, the old McLaren boss, can be a thorny character. But he ran his team as a perfectionist and considered second to be first of the losers.
So it is fairly obvious what he would he have thought of rejoicing at Jenson Button's fourth place in Sunday's Brazilian Grand Prix.
In contrast, the modern McLaren of Martin Whitmarsh was straight on to Twitter, re-tweeting fans lauding Button's climb from 14th on the grid and his team-mate Sergio Perez's move from 19th to sixth. They added their own picture of a half-smiling Whitmarsh on the pit wall with the caption, 'looks a bit happier, doesn't he?'
Excuse me, Whitmarsh has overseen as bad a season as the British team have endured since 1966, when Bruce McLaren launched his eponymous marque on Formula One at the Monaco Grand Prix.
Fourth place here was McLaren's highest finish in 19 races. This is obviously a desperately disappointing statistic for a team with such lavish facilities at their Sir Norman Foster-designed factory in Woking. But it is their gradual acceptance of the second rate that is most revealing of all.
Quite apart from the loss on Whitmarsh's watch of the team's main sponsor (Vodafone), top driver (Lewis Hamilton) and top designer (Paddy Lowe), he lacked the vision to bring in a proven driver - or indeed two.
Nico Hulkenburg of Sauber and Romain Grosjean of Lotus would have done fine. Perhaps he could have wrestled Fernando Alonso from Ferrari when he was most unsettled by Kimi Raikkonen's signing for the Scuderia next season or even have pre-empted Ferrari by signing Raikkonen himself.
Yes, he made overtures to Alonso, but they were too late and too half-hearted. So he dithered about offering the sub-standard Perez, who incidentally beat Button 10-9 in qualifying, a second season before finally being prevailed upon by senior staff to plump for rookie Kevin Magnussen instead.
And then what did Whitmarsh do? He went around the paddock trying to get Perez, the man he had just sacked, a job somewhere else. No wonder one senior figure in the sport told me that, in his view, Whitmarsh spends too much time faffing about other people's business - for example with FOTA, the team's association - rather than on the hard, disciplined process of producing a winning car.
The fear is that if the slide is not arrested, McLaren could slide the way Williams, the dominant team of 1980s, have so sadly done.
If Whitmarsh wanted to see how a top team now runs itself he could have looked a few garages along, at Red Bull. Their star driver Sebastian Vettel, the world champion, racked up his ninth consecutive win in an interesting race that was no more than spat on by rain, to equal Alberto Ascari's record from 60 years ago.
2014 Monster 26x Bookie Mugger
2015, 2016 WDC: LH44
