Ron Dennis inadvertently overshadowed the launch of the new McLaren by revealing that he will be stepping down as team principal as of March 1.<\/p>\n
In charge since 1981, Dennis will hand the reins of the race team to Martin Whitmarsh, who has had an increasingly prominent role in recent years. Dennis has said that he wants to be able to devote more time to the overall activities of the McLaren Group, and that he will no longer attend all the races. The 61-year-old insists that he will be taking a step back, and that it won\u2019t be difficult to do so.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn principle I\u2019ll still be there, I\u2019ll still hopefully be asked for an opinion,\u201d he said. \u201cPerhaps they\u2019ll get it even if they don\u2019t want it! But in the end the decisions as regards our racing team will be Martin\u2019s. It\u2019s not a question of whether it will be difficult. It\u2019s a question of taking the right decision for the group and the future of McLaren. The worst thing anyone can do is tell me what to do. My decision, and it\u2019s solely and exclusively my decision, is based on what is good for McLaren. <\/p>\n
\u201cI know McLaren requires all its executives to work harder. And from my perspective my efforts have got to be very much focused on the long-term strategy of the group, growing the group. It\u2019s completely appropriate that Martin becomes team principal at a time when a) we\u2019re coming out of a year of success, and b) I\u2019m still going to be here, and will be for quite some time, to ask opinions of. But I stress again, it\u2019s going to be an opinion, and the decisions are going to be Martin\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":739,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[],"tags":[167,179,34099,647],"issue_decade":[121591],"issue_year":[121612],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/29918"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/issue_content"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/739"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/29918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247940,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/29918\/revisions\/247940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29918"},{"taxonomy":"issue_decade","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_decade?post=29918"},{"taxonomy":"issue_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_year?post=29918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}