McLaren boss Ron Dennis says that Fernando Alonso’s radio comments during the Japanese GP resulted from frustration – but added that he regarded it as lacking “professionalism.”
Alonso likened the Honda power unit to a GP2 engine after he struggled to fight with rivals at Suzuka.
“That is just frustration,” said Dennis of Alonso’s comments. “Anything that is coming out of our drivers at the moment has its origins in frustration and disappointment and demotivation. We are all demotivated. I still cannot understand why everyone doesn’t appreciate the simple fact that you are not going to win the world championship if you have a second string engine. It is just not going to happen.
“And therefore we have to go through the pain, go through this learning curve and get a competitive engine. That is not a derogatory comment against Honda. Honda had the president of company, the president of R&D, the president of Honda Motor Company, all of these people are here totally committed.
“They understand what has to be done, and of course they are resourcing and increasing resources and putting more money and effort in to it and we will get there. It is just a bit painful at the moment. But we will get there.”
Pressed on Alonso’s comments he said: “I am not going to condone those sorts of things, because it doesn’t show the professionalism that I would like all our drivers to show, but he is in the car, he is frustrated and of course his exposure to the technical staff, maybe it was not a particularly constructive way to communicate with everyone at Honda.
“But the way for me to deal with drivers is either through the appropriate management channels which is Eric or in certain circumstances myself. Whatever I choose to do, or however it is done, it remains a team matter, not a matter for the media.”
Adam Cooper's F1 Blog 
I have to stand behind Alonso and Ron on this. As an F1 fan, it looks to me that all SKY F1 pundits are interested with is to see Fire between Alonso and Ron Dennis. But fortunately, they’re fighting together, they are on the same side.
Over the year, there have been more laid back comments from Button than Alonso, and we have to understand that English is not Alonso native language, so he might not have the subtle way of expressing his frustration in english. And just like he said afterwards, these shouldn’t have come out on air, it was a team radio communication. So this is FOM deciding to bring this public, just as they decided not to show Mercedes Cars during the race..
Shame…..
btw: pardon my comments if it make no sense, but I’m neither english speaking native, just french, but Still a huge fan of McLaren, Hamilton and British Motor racing just because they do it better (to my liking)
🙂 🙂
That closing sentence shows that Ron has a lot yet to learn about his star driver ….
Priceless! Of course Fred was out of line in his comments, but what can McLaren do, send him to the naughty corner, fire him?
He’s right, of course.
Until I read the headline I hadn’t realised that professionalism was a term that could be applied to what Ron and Honda try to pass off as a F1 competitor……
Didn’t Dennis call the engine second string? That’s not so respectful either.
What’s really not something under the realm of professionalism is using hundreds of pages of stolen IP and then trying to mount a media campaign to smear the team that had its IP stolen.
All of Ron’s public comments on the Alonso radio rant are to appease Honda and Japanese honor. If he wants to have a word with Alonso he would prefer to do it privately, not through the press. As it happened on home turf, Honda has its their nose out of joint. Ron’s just trying to clean up the mess.
Clearly Alonso is has reverted to his “I dont care, its all about me” mode, however, Ron knew of Fred’s personality when he signed him, Ron lived this before in the Alonso/Hamilton feud.
Never forget, it was Fred that went to the FIA and threw McLaren under the bus in the cheating scandal. I’m actually amazed that Ron chose to forgive and forget that.
Actually it was Ron Dennis and his team that threw themselves under the bus by not immediately going to the FIA to let them know that a staffer had gotten ahold of the stolen IP, rather than using it to streamline the Woking test program and in other ways. No, it wasn’t Alonso throwing Ron Dennis under the bus, it was Dennis’s own hubris.
Hi Leone, not wishing to split hairs or argue the point, the actual cheating scandal started in March 2007, with only Stepney and Coughlan implicated.
However, much later, in August, at the Hungarian Grand Prix, Alonso told Ron Dennis he will send incriminating messages exchanged between himself De la Rosa and Coughlan to the FIA, Dennis had no choice but to inform Max Mosley.
2007 McLaren timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Formula_One_espionage_controversy
Yes your right, Ron’s hubris played a part, and if he is to be believed, he did not even know what was going on in his own organisation, but it was Alonso who got the case re-opened with the FIA. Initially it was meant to be two rouge staff, Stepney/Ferrari and Coughlan/McLaren. Alonso managed to get McLaren, the whole organisation, thrown under the bus with the FIA.
Peterg, true, it started with Coughlan and Stepney, but while Ron Dennis may not have known about it at first, it did spread within the organization well beyond Coughlan. Dennis being in charge of the organization ultimately does have to same some responsibility, which he Ronspeaked around.
I will admit that Alonso is no easy person to work with it would seem, and I was glad to see him leave Ferrari, but I don’t know that I’d say he was solely responsible for the metaphorical tire tracks on Dennis et al.
True Indeed! Alonso certainly didn’t help, in fact he put the boot in when McLaren was most vulnerable from their own culpability.
Which brings me back to my initial thought. I still struggle to understand Ron letting him back into the team. I just assumed that Ron could never overlook having a driver basically blackmail him.
@ Peterg. Regarding the Ronster taking back the pirate Alonso, he also made him the highest paid driver!
Desperate times call for desperate measures!