Forgiveness in Formula One is almost taboo and, when it is attached to the impassive and imperious likes of Ron Dennis, McLaren’s usually intransigent power broker, it assumes a rare significance.
But the chief executive has mellowed in a special show of sentiment after the arrival back at the team, at his insistent behest, of Fernando Alonso, the double-champion he sensationally threw out seven years ago.
Accelerated by his disenchantment at Ferrari, last season’s flops, Alonso eagerly responded to Dennis’s overtures to rejoin the outfit that abandoned him for his alleged part in F1’s infamous ‘spygate’ scandal, when 700 pages of secret technical data was leaked to Mclaren by a Ferrari engineer.
The upshot was a fine of $100m (Dh367.3 million), the heaviest penalty in the long history of the sport, and Dennis was left to squirm and protest — as he does to this day — the team’s innocence.
But, in effect, a truce has been declared between Dennis and Alonso as the pair ready themselves for a new era powered to glory, they hope, by incomers Honda, the Japanese engine giants, who are investing billions of dollars in their grand prix revival.
Dennis and Alonso, and the Spaniard’s father and a gaggle of close friends, were all back together in Jerez in southern Spain this week for the opening F1 test sequence.
And Dennis, for once removing his cloak of adamancy, his almost perpetual attitude, wasted no time in rebuilding the relationship that had flourished before its dramatic collapse seven troubled years ago.
It will have been a severe test of his indomitable character, but he opened up: “Everyone has moved on. It was heavily amplified at the time and everyone got pretty bruised by it.
“I am mellower and Fernando has matured. To go back to ‘spygate’ would be a waste of time. Actions speak louder than words and we need to get on with racing and enjoying the experience.”
Knowing the rarely relaxed or smiling Dennis as I have over many years, I fully appreciate what a turnaround in his normal standstill on his voiced opinions this must have been.
Even more so when he abandoned his predominantly laconic delivery and added: “It is not so much pragmatic as clear thinking. One of the best things about Fernando is that he loves his motor racing. Why should we keep going back to something that is not positive? It could be dissected in lots of ways — but it is in the past.”
Well done, Ron, I forgive you all those decades of deadpan responses.
— The writer is a freelance journalist and motorsport expert
