Ron Dennis stands down as Chief Executive of McLaren Racing
McLaren today announced that Ron Dennis would stand down as chief executive officer and hand over these responsibilities to Martin Whitmarsh who will take this on in addition to his role of Team Principal of Vodafone McLaren Mercedes.
Ron Dennis at the 1991 Formula One United States Grand Prix
Many of the newspapers and press have speculated that this is because of a yet unrevealed part that Ron Dennis played in the “lying scandal” of the Australian Grand Prix (see our article here) which resulted in Lewis Hamilton being excluded from the results, McLaren parting company with their Sporting Director Dave Ryan and a future court hearing at the World Motorsport Council.
However McLaren have revealed that they plan to grow the road car section of the company with the formation of McLaren Automotive which will be managed by Ron Dennis.
McLaren stated
McLaren has for more than two years been engaged in a programme to develop a range of pure McLaren sports cars that will build on the great successes of the McLaren F1 and Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. As part of this plan, it is intended that McLaren Automotive, currently one of a number of companies within the McLaren Group, will become an independent company later this year. The launch date for the first model in the new range of McLaren sports cars will be in 2011.
