Ron Dennis: Brief Biography by Pete Fenelon


Ron Dennis started out as an apprentice at Thomson &
Taylor's, a famous British name in the motor trade. When it
was taken over by Chipstead in the late Sixties Ron ended
up as a mechanic on the Cooper F1 team, and later moved to
Brabham, where he became chief mechanic.

However, as Sir Jack moved closer to retirement, Ron found
himself doing a lot of the jobs typically associated with a
team manager, and so decided to go and do precisely that.
He left in about '71 to set up an F2 team with Neil Trundle
(Rondel racing) -- the team was renowned for its competence
in preparing cars; it ran Brabhams for a while then
commissioned the Motul F2 car (with backing from the French
oil company of the same name). This was quite successful
and there was talk of a Motul F1 car designed by Ray Jessop
for 1973 but the oil crisis hit and the money evaporated.
The car later became the Token (Tony Vlassopoulo and Ken
Grob backed its completion; Ron had nothing more to do with
it AFAIK); Tom Pryce made his F1 debut in it. 

Ron then set up a number of F2 teams running March chassis
-- the Marlboro Ecuador team (which wasn't successful),
then Project Three Racing (which was). Project Three gave
rise to Project Four, another successful F2 team which I
think also ran F3 cars in the late 70s/early 80s and also
did a lot of the build programme for the BMW M1 ProCar
series.

Project Four was backed by Marlboro and Ron took on John
Barnard to design a carbon-fibre F1 chassis; at the time
McLaren, who were also Marlboro backed, were deeply
uncompetitive and at the insistence of Marlboro the Project
Four team merged with McLaren to form McLaren International

Ron and McLaren's Teddy Mayer were originally joint
principals of the team but eventually Mayer went his own
way, leaving Ron to take charge... The MP4/X designation of
McLaren F1 cars these days stands for "Marlboro Project
Four"... 

After the departure of Teddy Mayer, Ron built McLaren into
arguably the finest F1 team of the Eighties, negotiating
engine deals with Porsche/TAG and subsequently Honda, and
signing such established stars as Lauda, Senna, Prost and
Berger.

However, the loss of Honda power at the end of '92 marked
the beginning of a change in the team's fortunes. A Ford-
powered season with Senna was surprisingly successful,
though teammate Andretti was disappointing; the 1994
Peugeot and 1995 Mercedes cars have been highly
disappointing, as was an abortive linkup with Mansell. 

The McLaren F1 GTR has become an immensely successful GT
racer, winning Le Mans at its first attempt.  

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Source: Pete Fenelon