Another instalment in the world’s most expensive soap opera known as Formula One aired this weekend with the elevation of Ron Dennis to the status of Knight Bachelor. Nobody in the sport doubts that Dennis is one of its towering figures. Dennis was wont to be awkward at F1 meetings, a thorn in the sides of Ecclestone and his sidekick Max. Nor, during the Spygate imbroglio, did Mosley feel Dennis was as upfront about how far Ferrari’s intellectual property had permeated through the team as he ought to have been. In the last 48 hours, one of F1’s most senior figures, upon hearing of Dennis’s knighthood, chuckled that Max would be climbing out of his grave. For Sir Ron Dennis is one of the two supreme figures in McLaren history, alongside only founder Bruce McLaren himself.

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