From plucking Lewis Hamilton off the Stevenage streets to the biggest fine in sports history: The remarkable tale of F1 titan RON DENNIS as he finally lands a knighthood

Another installment of the world's most expensive soap opera, known as Formula One, aired this weekend with the elevation of Ron Dennis to Knight Bachelor status.

Get up, Mr. Ron! – and so the long-cherished ambition from the life of the former McLaren owner is rightly honored at the age of 76.

No one in the sport doubts that Dennis is one of the great figures. Bernie Ecclestone and Enzo Ferrari may be apart on the broadest level, but Dennis' perfectionism, bordering on mania, has raised the standard for all of modern Formula 1, not just for his hometown, the Woking-based company he founded. has transformed into the most successful team in the country. and the world's second highest after Ferrari.

No team boss has won more. Between the takeover of McLaren in 1980 and his retirement in 2017, he achieved 17 world championships and 158 Grand Prix victories thanks to giants such as Niki Lauda, ​​Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost and Mika Hakkinen. And don't forget the little boy he took from the streets of Stevenage and pointed to the stars: Lewis Hamilton.

Ron could never have imagined that his child prodigy had knighted him in just three years when he played Professor Higgins against Hamilton's Eliza Doolittle.

Dennis plucked Hamilton from the streets of Stevenage and helped him reach the top of the sport

Perhaps it hasn't been, except for the fallout from the most visceral blockbuster episode of F1 soap opera to air this century, namely the 2007 Spygate scandal.

This dark story involved 780 pages of Ferrari technical secrets imported into the McLaren factory during Hamilton's debut season.

It resulted in McLaren being fined a record $100 million, almost wiping them off the map. They are finally showing signs of recovery.

But the sanction and the implication of cheating that underlay it were not only damaging to McLaren, but were also intended to destroy Dennis' reputation and deprive him of the knighthood he craved.

That was the clear intention of Max Mosley, the FIA ​​president, whose body imposed the fine. Mosley hated Dennis, and pretty much the other way around.

They were cut from very different cloth, though equally remarkable in their own ways. Mosley was the son of Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the fascist Blackshirts, whose unruly politics never denied his son. He was a minor aristocrat, educated at Oxford, and fluent in several languages.

Dennis, one of the great self-made men, started as an 18-year-old mechanic on Jochen Rindt's Cooper. In contrast to Mosley's eloquence, Dennis' idiosyncratic use of English was so complex and verbose that it earned its own nickname 'Ronspeak' in the paddock.

Examples of his convolutions are numerous. They all make sense, but bend through labyrinths to get there. “When I got into motorsport, so many things were a black art,” he said. “But black art was a cover for, 'We don't really know.' It was intuitive engineering. I decided to make a science of it. We will develop the science to remove uncertainty and make winning a certainty.”

Dennis shows the future King Charles in the McLaren trophy room at their factory in 1999

Or: 'Focus is considered good, obsession is bad. But basically they are the same. And then there is the ego. Ego is a core ingredient of ambition.

'Ambition and ego are close bedfellows. And I guess, like everyone else, I'm looking for happiness. It's a straight forward goal. I don't see happiness as laughing or clapping. I see it as the opposite of unhappiness, the opposite of anger, of depression. If you can get into that frame of mind, you will be much more productive.”

But back to the animus between Mosley and Dennis. Dennis was often clumsy at F1 meetings and was a thorn in the side of Ecclestone and his sidekick Max. Ron was informed, confident and willing to question decisions in ways that other team leaders were afraid to. He wouldn't settle for a 30 percent increase if he thought it should be 40 percent.

During the Spygate controversy, Mosley also did not feel that Dennis was as honest about the extent to which Ferrari's intellectual property had permeated the team as he should have been. This led to Ecclestone's immortal quote: 'It's $5 million for the crime; $95 million for Ron as ac***.”

In another barely believable twist, Mosley was revealed in the News of the World the following year as having paid for role-playing orgies of a particularly colorful hue in a west London basement. Speaking one day from his hideaway on the first floor of McLaren's headquarters – the futuristic Sir Norman Foster-designed building known as SMERSH – Dennis told me he was convinced Mosley had it in for him, and said, 'Do you think Max is just a sado? -masochist in his private life? It's impossible.'

In the past 48 hours, one of Formula 1's most senior figures, upon hearing of Dennis' knighthood, chuckled that Max would rise from his grave. Dennis's nemesis, who spent the final years of his life in a mad attempt to muzzle the free press in direct response to the News of the World revelation, died at home in London in May 2021, aged 81.

Max Rufus Mosley, suffering from incurable cancer, blew his brains out and left a note on the bedroom door: 'Don't go in. Call the police.'

What a triumph this gong is for Ron. Officially the award is given for services to charity, but so did Sir Ian Botham. Both Dennis and Botham have done great deeds for good causes, but just as we will always remember Botham for his achievements as a brilliant cricketer, history will recognize Dennis mainly for his achievements in F1.

The former F1 chief seen in the bumper cars with the Duchess of York at a charity ball in 1994

As one of Britain's greatest entrepreneurs, he has had a long journey: from a childhood spent making tea in the Brabham factory to a personal fortune of around £750 million.

He transformed a dilapidated factory on an industrial estate on the outskirts of Woking into a synonym for British ingenuity. McLaren has produced technologies for airports and hospitals and for winning cyclists, and even for the bobsled that Lizzy Yarnold raced to gold at the Sochi Winter Olympics a decade ago.

There were 100 McLaren employees when Dennis arrived in 1980. When he left, the McLaren Group workforce stood at 3,500 with a turnover of £920 million and a road car business almost reaching its production target of 5,500.

Stories about Ron are legendary. Can it really be true that he had the gravel in his driveway removed to be washed and returned? Or that he once interviewed someone through his kitchen window so that the interviewee's shoes didn't soil his spotless carpets?

Demanding, neurotic, alternately charming and aloof, always striving for self-improvement, Ron is a man of generosity and loyalty. His kindness is wonderful, both in minute, personal ways toward friends in ill health, and on the larger stage. He is chairman and founder of Podium Analytics, which works with sports stars to help reduce injuries.

He also founded Tommy's, a maternity charity that aims to reduce complications and deaths and support those experiencing grief.

This involvement is inspired by his own bitter experience when he and his lively ex-wife Lisa lost a child of their own. They have three other children from the marriage that ended in 2008.

Although McLaren paid fitting tribute this weekend to Brazilian Gil de Ferran, their highly regarded advisor and winner of the Indianapolis 500, who died on Friday aged 56 of a heart attack while racing in America, there has been no word about it their social media sites. to mark Dennis' award.

It's a baffling omission from the new guard. Because Sir Ron Dennis is one of the two greatest figures in McLaren's history, next to sole founder Bruce McLaren himself.