JANUARY 13, 2001

Dennis gives thumbs-up to Pollock

MCLAREN chairman Ron Dennis has expressed his respect and regard for British American Racing cofounder Craig Pollock, and believes that his team will have the edge over rival Honda-users Jordan in the 2001 World Championship.

MCLAREN chairman Ron Dennis has expressed his respect and regard for British American Racing cofounder Craig Pollock, and believes that his team will have the edge over rival Honda-users Jordan in the 2001 World Championship.

Having first-hand experience of dealing with Honda, whose V10 engines powered McLaren to four World Championships from 1998-91, Dennis remarked that he had a lot of time for Pollock.

"He has paid his dues," said the McLaren boss. "He came into the business not knowing a lot about F1, but he has learned and along the way taken a whole machine gun magazine of bullets when it comes to criticism.

"I think he will succeed pretty well. In public, his attitude is - quite rightly - 'I think that Jordan is going to give us a hard time' but if I had to balance one against the other, then I think BAR will go ahead."

Dennis was speaking at McLaren's Woking headquarters yesterday where he also judged that Toyota had made a tactical error in basing its forthcoming F1 team in Germany.

"In effect, they have said that they are going to produce the biggest orchestra in the world - and then decided to play it in a tent ," he commented.

Dennis also predicted that the McLaren-Mercedes squad would go into the new season possibly with a stronger technical baseline than ever.

"I think we have the strongest 'at-circuit' brainpower than we have had for years," he said. "This should manifest itself in better race strategies and enable us to hit (achieve) a race set-up more quickly."

To that end, he confirmed that the team had recruited more than 40 additional technical staff for the F1 project over the past 12 months.