In the 2000s, McLaren was becoming a force to reckon with under the leadership of Ron Dennis. The Briton also managed to bring Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso under one roof, although that turned out to be counter-productive because of the duo’s fierce rivalry. Amidst this, Dennis was given the tag of ‘boring’ in 2007. To shed that, the then McLaren boss shelled out $5 Million for an extravaganza in Spain.
To improve the team’s PR image, Dennis launched the 2007 car, the MP4/22, in Spain. Frank Worrall, in Lewis Hamilton: Triple World Champion, wrote, “Alonso and Hamilton took to the streets of Valencia on a special circuit in front of 100,000 fans for a few parade laps in a launch estimated to have cost upwards of £4 million. Dennis wanted to show he could put on a launch with style, and it went some way towards convincing a skeptical media that maybe he was mellowing a little.”
The media’s perception of McLaren wasn’t totally unfounded. Dennis was considered a man of few words who kept to himself and was largely unapproachable. To be fair to him, his management style reaped benefits for McLaren. However, he needed to shed the image. Dennis’ image also suffered as Kimi Raikkonen drove for the team for five years before the dynamic duo of Alonso and Hamilton took over. Raikkonen, as many F1 fans know, was never media-friendly.
Raikkonen’s devil-may-care attitude later turned into a trope for the Iceman that fans and media fell in love with later. It’s been two years since the Finnish driver’s retirement from F1, but his hilarious straightforward answers in interviews are still fan favorites.
Dennis, however, was successful in turning McLaren into a team that exuded excitement. The way Hamilton and Alonso fought on and off the track was not ideal for the team, but the ‘boring’ tag was dumped.
Did mismanagement cost Lewis Hamilton & Fernando Alonso a world title?
Alonso walked into McLaren with a back-to-back championship wins reputation. Naturally, he expected to take over the reins of the team as the senior driver. Hamilton, a rookie, had the ambition to stamp his authority on the sport. This resulted in animosity between the pair.
The duo often raced wheel-to-wheel against each other. The battles often spilled over to the interviews, where they openly spoke against each other. With neither ready to back off, they both finished the season on the same number of points, missing out on the championship by just one point.
In a 2021 interview, Alonso refused to blame Hamilton for their dynamic. He instead decided to blame McLaren management for failing to control the situation between two ambitious individuals. Speaking with Sky Sports, he said, “I don’t want to blame Ron [Dennis, then team principal], I don’t want to blame a particular name, but as a team and as a management, we were too young, too ambitious and no one guided us.”
Despite the Spaniard’s clarification of Hamilton, the reputation refuses to fade away. To this day, they are seen as fierce rivals. Any and every on-track battle becomes a widely discussed topic in the media. Fernando’s 2023 move to Aston Martin caused quite a few of those in 2023. 2024 will surely bring in a lot more.
