A previous five-year collaboration led to total domination of Formula One and McLaren chief executive officer Ron Dennis is confident its new partnership with Honda can bring back that winning feeling to the team.
Since 1995, McLaren has been using Mercedes-Benz engines, but after two difficult seasons in F1 their new deal with the Japanese car manufacturer renews one of the most successful partnerships in motorsport’s elite class.
“The first few races I predict will be problematic, as we wrestle with what we hope are performance advantages, and inevitably performance advantages sometimes carry unreliability with them,” Dennis told CNN’s Amanda Davies in an exclusive interview.
“Once we’ve got that in control, I think our competitiveness will be quickly established, and I feel when coupled to two world champions, and the talents of Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button, I think that the outcome I hope will be inevitable: that we’ll return to our winning ways,” he added.
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“These drivers had contracts through to the end of 2014 so there’s no contractual necessity and I was absolutely open to both drivers about what the process was,” said Dennis.
“So I can understand the fuss but the fact is we’re a business. We’re a sport in a business, there’s a right time to take the decision, and the right time to take the decision was the time it was taken. If it had been appropriate to take it sooner we would have done.”
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