At some stage during this helter-skelter season, most people in Formula One have had moments when they must have felt some sympathy for the plight of Ron Dennis. Even his arch enemies at Ferrari have acknowledged that, at times, events have conspired against the McLaren Mercedes team principal in a manner that has been painful to witness.

In recent weeks we have grown used to the image of Dennis like a boxer on the ropes, waiting for the referee to put him out of his misery. Fighting battles on all sides, he has exhausted himself trying to keep his team’s shape and direction and there have been emotional moments when it has got too much.

When you distil it, the root of his problems and the cause of all his battles is not Dennis, nor is it Lewis Hamilton or Fernando Alonso, or the “Ferrari-gate” spying row or even Max Mosley and the FIA, the sport’s governing body. The cause of it has been Dennis’s determination to remain true to one of his core principles as a motor racing man - his policy of equality between his drivers.

The McLaren leader has stuck to this through a blizzard of criticism, controversy, financial pain and unadorned misery. Whatever your views on Dennis the man and his shortcomings, it is hard not to admire his cussedness as he has remained true to a policy that has earned him broadsides from the British press, the Spanish press and from Alonso and Hamilton and their respective retinues.

It also lay behind the pitlane controversy in Hungary and the massive row Dennis had with Alonso the next day when the Spanish driver tried to force the team principal to grant him preferential treatment over Hamilton, which led to a new FIA investigation and a $100 million (about £50 million) fine and McLaren’s ejection from this year’s constructors’ championship.

So why has Dennis stuck to his guns? Why has he not caved in to Alonso, who has been complaining about the policy for most of the season? It would have made Dennis’s life easier, but the man is not for turning. Whatever the cost, however explosive the mix, it has not entered his head. In a recent interview with The Times he shed light on this critical issue.

“It is something that I’ve always had in racing teams that I’ve operated because, to me, it is entirely logical to have a policy where you are striving to give each driver equal treatment – that means equality in everything,” Dennis said. “It is just completely logical to try to field the two most competitive cars and be able to internally defend, in a scientific and practical way, a challenge from one driver to the team saying the team isn’t fair. I think fairness is a key factor in sport.

“The easy option at the beginning of the season would have been to nominate a No 1 and a No 2. The problem with that is that the whole team becomes out of balance because the mentality of the people on the cars becomes ‘A team, B team’ and that is just not an environment which grows the team.”

Dennis has acknowledged that this season has been exceptionally difficult because in Hamilton and Alonso he has drivers of similar ability. “Most times, the problem doesn’t exist because one driver is normally better then the other,” Dennis said. “And how could anyone imagine that I would be in the situation I’m in, where both drivers have a very similar work ethic and a very similar approach to how they race and how they optimise their cars? There is an inevitability that they are going to look at each other and have a view which they express to me.”

But Dennis seems happy to take the onerous weight the policy places on him. “I accept it as being the price that I pay for being able to say to Fernando and Lewis, ‘Race on the circuit and don’t try to pressure me off the circuit,’ ” he said. “The severity of that problem this year is certainly, for various reasons, much greater than in previous seasons.”

The previous big driver clash at McLaren came in the late 1980s, between Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, who, in a foretaste of the breakdown in relations between Hamilton and Alonso, ended up hating each other. Dennis said that it is hard to make comparisons.

“I can’t honestly say whether this season is more difficult or not,” he said. “I can remember very, very difficult moments in the relationship between Prost and Senna, but those problems had different roots, complexities and circumstances. The ones I face now are amplified by circumstances that are out of my control – what is taking place outside the team – and that makes it very, very difficult.”

In the meantime, Dennis is going to stick to his philosophy, whatever the consequences. “There will be no lack of effort on our part to try and maintain the core principles of our company and the principles by which we run it because it is ingrained in the company,” he said.