Inspiration of the Hamilton Effect Turns Dennis Into a Dream-maker

Ron Dennis can still look as austere as Stafford Cripps. In his black suit, white shirt and perfectly knotted tie, McLaren's puppet master is a study in pinched immaculateness in his dustless office in Woking, the £300m glass and steel technology center that was built in 2004.

Here one of his 1,400 employees is called Phil the Light and his full-time job is to walk through the factory to ensure not a single light bulb is out of action. There is another nice story about the old obsessive having the gravel on his Woking mansion taken away and washed before being relaid.

But as the writer RC Robertson-Glasgow observed in his classic autobiography, everyone is a total stranger to everyone else, "misjudged on the few and occasional fragments that he or she uncovers to hurried and self-interested companions", and there is growing evidence that Dennis no longer corresponds to his caricature.

There are even signs that Lewis Hamilton, the brilliant young driver whom he mentored from child to champion, is having a more profound influence on his employer than the other way round.

Dennis's palms are turned upwards and he shakes his head in gentle disbelief as he talks about his protégé, who became the youngest champion in formula one history in Brazil on Sunday.

Gazing at the vast, man-made lake beside his headquarters, a 62-hectare site which also includes 10,000 trees, Dennis talks about his foundation, Dreamchasing. "I have been inspired by Lewis. It's great being part of the Lewis story. You can go through life with your eyes closed or your eyes wide open. My attitude has changed.

"There are so many people in this world who don't have the opportunity to have a better life. This is the first time I've been asked about the foundation but it's about creating opportunities for young people and supporting that opportunity.

"I can't be Oxfam or Cancer Relief. But this is about people, my family included, having a sense of reality about the hardship that other people have."

Dennis, 61, has had his own hardships in the past two years. These include the "Spygate" scandal in 2007, when McLaren was fined £50m for possessing technical secrets belonging to Ferrari, as well as the bust-up with his driver Fernando Alonso during the same year. More personally his brother died and his 22-year-old marriage to his American wife Lisa collapsed.

"I've had a bumpy time," Dennis said with wry understatement. "A while ago I sat down and thought about things. I hadn't reviewed my will for ages. I asked my family if they supported putting a foundation together and they did.

"There were lots of reasons and one of the most important is that my wife and I - we haven't got divorced yet - wanted something tangible that the family could get involved with, which they could appreciate. I don't want to talk about this, I really don't, but it does make you feel good to make people's lives better."

He has certainly made Hamilton's life better and Dennis looked more comfortable talking about formula one's charismatic new champion, with whom he has worked since the driver was 13.

"I have had the experience so many times of drivers excelling in all categories leading into formula one but who then can't cut it. They just can't cut it. So you really don't know until that first race in formula one. But having said that, I will never forget that GP2 race in Turkey in 2006 when Lewis was second or third and spun. He sat in the middle of the road pointing in the wrong direction and everyone streamed past him.

"He got started again and came round 15th. The whole motor sport world watching that race was then mesmerised by the fact that he overtook a car in every single lap until the end of the race when he finally came second.

"Everyone there knew that he was going to be special. In GP2 the cars are so close as to be the same. That was a phenomenal drive. He's had some wonderful drives in formula one but that was the moment when we all realised how special he really was.

"Before his first grand prix I told him not to set his sights so high, that this was the beginning of his GP career, not the beginning and the end. But everyone was amazed by his performance in his first grand prix in Australia.

"I remember him coming off the first corner in second place and everyone was stunned. He overtakes his team-mate and the world champion, Alonso, and you think...my goodness. Then he actually led the race. It was unheard of."

There is another little shake of the head. "In the two years Lewis has been in formula one he's achieved more points than anyone else. Ever. He's had nine grand prix wins and the biggest percentage of podium positions any driver has ever had in his first two years. He's finished second in his first world championship, he won his second world championship, he's the youngest world champion ever ..."

He says there were special celebrations in Brazil on Sunday night: "We took a whole nightclub. We have friends in Brazil. I realized it was time to go to bed at about three in the morning but a few people were still there at 5.30.

"Not everyone could go to Brazil so the company celebrated as a whole on Tuesday evening. There was champagne and fireworks to give a visual memory of the moment."

Dennis says he is more relaxed and is not an obsessive-compulsive: "I just have great attention to detail." It is that attention to detail that sees McLaren aim to improve its performance by 0.2sec every race. "We were two and a half seconds faster in Brazil than we were in Australia," he says.

But now there are other things in his life. "Middle age comes upon one suddenly, like a traffic ticket," said the author Darryl Pinckney. And Dennis knows all about traffic.

Ron Dennis will be speaking at Leaders in London, which takes place on December 3 and 4. For more information visit www.leadersinlondon.com