Jordan: I bet McLaren wants Ron back

After the first three stages of 2023, McLaren has only 12 points, which is more than ten times less than the leading Red Bull Racing. Eddie Jordan analyzed what was far from the best start to the season on the Formula for Success podcast and suggested that the team secretly dreamed of the return of Ron Dennis, under whom it once achieved its most notable success in Formula 1.

In Dennis’s few decades in charge of McLaren, Niki Lauda, ​​Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Mika Hakkinen and Lewis Hamilton became world champions throughout the years and the team won the Constructors’ Championship seven times. But in fact the decline started even under him, and in 2017 he not only had to leave McLaren after 37 years at Woking, but also sell all his shares in McLaren Technology Group and McLaren Automotive.

The last time a McLaren driver climbed the top step of the podium was in 2021 when Daniel Ricciardo won the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. But the gap between that victory and the previous one was almost ten years, and now the team is no longer in the leading group, but only fighting for positions in the middle of the pack.

“Ron was a perfectionist, right? He just always planned everything down to the smallest detail,” said Jordan, the former owner of the Jordan team, who now commentates on the races on British television channel Channel 4. “He wanted riders of the level of Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna to race for his team.

It must be admitted that we all laughed and made fun of Ron, teased him for his desire to achieve sterile cleanliness in everything, for his approach to working with machines and with people. But I bet the team wants him back now.

Because McLaren isn’t even close to where it once was. Say what you will, but Ron Dennis was a fantastically driven man, dedicated to his team, and his staff, the people who worked with him, saw him as something of a hero.”