There’s an ominous silence blanketing any revitalisation moves at the trouble-torn McLaren F1 headquarters following the most disastrous season in the team’s history.
And my instincts tell me that before long we shall be let in on the news that team principal Martin Whitmarsh, as nice a guy as he is, has not been saved by his amiable personality and been ousted from his pit-wall throne.
The denouement will come at the hands of the returning Ron Dennis, as ruthless and as icily cold as they come, once he gets into his stride as chief executive of the McLaren group.
It is difficult to image the embarrassment felt by everybody at the once-mighty McLaren grand prix outfit as they slipped so pitifully into oblivion last season without even a podium placing.
It was a wince-making show of ineptitude with a car that was, quite frankly, rubbish in a team that looked, under Whitmarsh’s stewardship, as if it had lost direction and purpose.
The spectre of Dennis, the former team boss who handed over to Whitmarsh in 2010, looms menacingly over his successor.
It was Dennis, aided by the legendary likes of champions Ayrton Senna, the Brazilian, and Frenchman Alain Prost, among illustrious others, who cornered the world title market and overshadowed even Ferrari.
The demise of McLaren, collapsing down to amongst the also-rans last season, stirred Whitmarsh to proclaim: “We need a kick up the backside.”
The “we” seems a certainty to turn into an “I” as Dennis cracks down in an effort to restore the McLaren reputation. Not that he can do it alone...
And here I suspect is where there could be a quick return to Formula One for genuine genius Ross Brawn.
He quit Mercedes at the end of 2013 preferring, he indicated, to have a sabbatical deep-sea fishing and relaxing — but it would be a waste of an extra special talent if he were allowed to vanish from the F1 scene.
Brawn, the mastermind of seven world championships and the moving force behind Michael Schumacher’s treasure trove of five successive crowns at Ferrari, will front Dennis’s list of desirables for the team boss’s job.
And quite rightly so. There is, in my opinion, nobody as gifted in every sense of a grand prix team’s need than Brawn — master tactician, engineer, man-manager and overall supervisor of success on the go.
Dennis, cheered by the McLaren workforce in a 20-minute speech at HQ, promised without revealing quite what: “There will be changes... and we will be winners again.”
Not, apparently, with Whitmarsh. Watch this space.
— The writer is a motorsport expert based in the UK
