KEY POINTS:
Formula One's break could not have come at a more timely moment.
While Jean Todt, Ferrari and others keep sticking pins into metaphorical Ron Dennis effigies, the McLaren chief will use the time to regroup.
The first steps came last week when the team issued a
statement at the behest of championship leader Lewis Hamilton, in which he (and they, finally) categorically denied that he used the F-word when speaking with Dennis on the radio after the controversial qualifying session in Hungary.
The fallout from that incident is still reverberating round the McLaren Technical Centre in Woking, where there is a very real danger that the team may fracture into mutually exclusive pro-Hamilton or pro-Alonso camps.
Dennis is already fighting an increasingly belligerent and sanctimonious Ferrari team, as well as a governing body that risks accusations of mounting a witch-hunt against him personally.
Ferrari have launched an appeal against the World Motor Sport Council's decision from 26 July not to penalise McLaren even though their chief designer Mike Coughlan was held to be in possession of Ferrari's intellectual property.
Many believe that the whole espionage thing is just an excuse for Ferrari to try to destabilise McLaren at a time when they are losing ground in the world championship fight.
Some question why Luigi Macaluso, the head of the Italian sporting authority (the CSAI) and a man with past commercial dealings with Ferrari, should be allowed to intervene on their behalf.
Others question why, if McLaren are accused of culpability in the Coughlan Affair via collective responsibility, have Ferrari not been similarly treated given that Coughlan's sworn affidavit says that Nigel Stepney, while still a Ferrari employee, handed over the secret information.
These are issues one hopes that the Court of Appeal will address in Paris in September.
Quite the last thing Dennis needs on top of all that is aggravation with either Alonso, the double champion he lured from Renault, or Hamilton, his protege these past 10 years.
The break will do Hamilton good. Nobody in history has ever fought such opposition for the world title in their first year. Usually that takes three or four.
He is thus under fantastic pressure, which he has handled brilliantly. He will have time to relax, and plan his campaign for the final six races.
Dennis, meanwhile, needs to make maximum use of these two weeks not just to make sure his cars improve, but to stabilise an inter-team situation that is close to the edge of control.
- THE INDEPENDENT
