"Ja, we really like to win," Norbert Haug, their director of motor sport, said to me. During the winter, at a lavish party in the Science Museum, he presided over the launch of a superteam, in which McLaren and Marlboro were joined by the oil company Mobil, said to be contributing £10m a year, and Mercedes-Benz, who are supplying the engines.Mercedes enjoy a reputation for refusing to come second. Ron Dennis may be a visionary, they chorus, but the visions have led him to take his eye off the ball.If that is so, he has chosen a bad time. And all this, the critics say, is the reason why last year was the first since Dennis took over that the team didn't win a single grand prix, and why the Mansell farce was allowed to occur. Apart from the Formula One team, there are divisions concerned with advanced electronic research, with building the world's most expensive sports car, with mounting an assault on the land speed record, and with creating an industrial park to pioneer a new approach to working environments. Within a year, the team were winning races again, and since then they have earned six constructors' championships and seven drivers' titles: three apiece for Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, and one for Niki Lauda.Now, 15 years after Dennis took control of a small organisation and turned it into a byword for obsessive attention to detail, the McLaren group employ 550 people in seven locations. While paying lip service to the old regime, Dennis brought in his own designers and his own car, and moved the factory from Colnbrook to his base at Woking.
After all, it was Marlboro's impatience with McLaren's lack of success that allowed him to gain control of the team in the first place.That was back in 1980, when the people at Philip Morris engineered what at first appeared to be a merger between Teddy Mayer's ailing Marlboro McLaren team and Dennis's lean young Project Four outfit, also Marlboro- backed. But it's more complex than just putting a brand name on a car."Dennis knows, perhaps better than anyone, that to justify such an investment his cars have to win races. Coverage in news bulletins was seen by several times that number. These figures are the reason that a company like Philip Morris, makers of Marlboro cigarettes, are willing to put probably upwards of £20m a year into Dennis's team, since it is the only way they can still legitimately advertise their cigarettes to a mass audience."I loathe the word sponsorship," Dennis told me after practice on Friday "We sell media exposure.
In the boardrooms of several multinational companies, the news represented a catastrophe. Ron Dennis, the boss of the McLaren team, is aware that last year about 300 million people in 121 countries watched the televised transmission of each of the season's 16 grands prix. Good for jokes about how he might be able to get into the new McLaren-Mercedes if he took his wallet out of his back pocket first But elsewhere the reaction was very different. "YOU WANT to know how bad it is?" The man glanced over my shoulder, checking for eavesdroppers in the crowded pit lane at Interlagos on Friday afternoon "I'll tell you It's like a pilot missing the runway. That's how bad it is." To most people, the story of Nigel Mansell's ill-fitting seat is a bit of a laugh A free gift to newspaper cartoonists. But who was the first person to be banned for indulging in an illegal substance? - Tim Mickleburgh, GrimsbyIf you know the answers to any of these questions, or have a sporting question of your own you would like answered, write to:Q & ASports DeskIndependent on Sunday1 Canada SquareCanary WharfLondon E14 5DLFax: 0171 293 2894. Does this happen at other grounds? Which grounds holds the record in this respect? - Ian Donaldson, InverlochyQ. We hear a lot these days, unfortunately, about sportsmen and women who have been caught taking drugs.
Why is this date chosen and why is it well before the end of the season? - Peter Locke, BarnsleyQ. A frequent feature of matches at Recreation Park, Alloa, is for the ball to leave the ground either on to the Clackmannan Road or on to the disused railway line. All 11 players have been used in the Ipswich first team this season - Peter Marjoram, IpswichANSWERS PLEASEQ The transfer deadline for footballers passed last Thursday. Has any other football club had more foreign-born players within its squad at one time?A. With the recent signing of Alex Mathie from Newcastle United, Ipswich Town can currently field an entire team not qualified for England:- Forrest (Can), Yallop (Can), Wark (Sco), Taricco (Arg), Williams (Wal), Norfolk (NZ), Guenchev (Bul), Thomsen (Den), Paz (Urug), N Gregory (Zambia), Mathie (Sco).