It is hard to find the right words to describe the season that McLaren Mercedes and Ron Dennis, their embattled team principal, have endured this year. A shambles, a disaster – take your pick.

The proud Woking-based Formula One team have stumbled from one crisis to another, culminating this week in having to issue a humiliating public apology to their rivals, fans and the FIA, the sport’s governing body, in an attempt to stave off further sanctions for conduct that amounts to cheating.

It had all looked so bright and beautiful in the McLaren garden this time last year. Lewis Hamilton was about to make his debut, the team had secured the services of Fernando Alonso, the double world champion, and a glorious season in Dennis’s 60th year seemed on the cards. Who knows, he could even have been on his way to Buckingham Palace for a knighthood by the end of this month, but not any more.

Instead, we are left to ponder how on earth it all went wrong and why Dennis and possibly also Martin Whitmarsh, his right-hand man and chief operating officer, have not already resigned or been fired. If their chosen field had been politics or football, for example, both would have been forced out months ago.

Consider the charge-sheet. Quite apart from McLaren not winning a drivers’ World Championship since Mika Hakkinen’s in 1999 and a constructors’ title since a year before that (in football this would have been enough on its own to have sent Dennis and Whitmarsh packing), this season has seen a truly extraordinary catalogue of failings under their “watch”.

They completely failed to meet the challenge of managing Alonso, who ripped the team apart as his own frailties in the face of Hamilton’s quality on the track led him from disillusionment to destructive anger. In trying to handle the Spaniard, Dennis stumbled from one row to another, each with more damaging consequences, until the two refrained from speaking to each other at all.

At the same time, McLaren were embroiled (as we now know) at many levels in the Ferrari spying and cheating scandal. This cost McLaren the biggest fine in sporting history (£50 million), disqualification from this year’s constructors’ championship and now ritual public humiliation, which has damaged the team’s commercial and sporting reputation. It has also left six senior members of McLaren subject to continuing legal proceedings in Italy while Dennis’s claims that his team would be cleared are in tatters.

As if that was not enough, McLaren then managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the most dramatic manner on the track, when Hamilton and his advisers on the pitwall, led by Dennis, contrived to throw away what would have been an historic rookie World Championship in the last two races. This has left Hamilton’s army of fans scratching their heads in disbelief.

Throughout it all, there is a common thread of poor management and poor strategic decision-making at the top of an organisation that has proved unequal to the challenges it faced. Any management consultant worth his salt would conclude that the “weakest links” in McLaren are to be found at the very top, and the case for a clear-out and new start is overwhelming.

Just consider Whitmarsh’s own analysis in the embarrassing letter he was forced to write to the FIA this week to avoid further punishment for cheating. He wrote: “Apart from the morale-sapping consequence within the team, its ability to continue its task of generating investment has been made virtually impossible. Consequently, the long-term damage to the team’s previously outstanding record and commercial capability is significantly greater than that potentially envisaged by the fiscal penalty that was imposed.”

Dennis, like Whitmarsh, is self-important, long-winded and given to ostentation. But these are superficial failings. There is no doubt that he is a man of integrity and his personal moral conduct has never been called into question; the same goes for Whitmarsh. But the pair have been key players in many of the biggest errors the team have made this year and surely it is time they accepted responsibility for these and the failings of others below them.

–– McLaren yesterday confirmed Heikki Kovalainen, the Finnish driver, as Hamilton’s teammate next season, as predicted in yesterday’s Times.

Lowdown on Ron

PositionTeam principal, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes, chairman, CEO McLaren Group
Age 60
Family status Married to Lisa. Two daughters and one son
Lives Woking, Surrey
Wealth Personal fortune estimated at £200 million-plus
Started in motor racing Worked for the Cooper Racing Company in 1966 and two years later became chief mechanic to Jack Brabham
Big break Assumed control of McLaren in 1982 and showed entrepreneurial and management skill in rapidly transforming the team into a competitive outfit
Racing achievements Under Dennis’s leadership, McLaren have won seven constructors’ championships and nine drivers’ titles for Niki Lauda (one), Alain Prost (three), Ayrton Senna (three) and Mika Hakkinen (two)
Famous for “Ron-speak” – Dennis’s long-winded style
Greatest off-track achievement Commissioning the futuristic McLaren Technology Centre
Biggest faux pax of this year After the Chinese Grand Prix when Lewis Hamilton slid off into the gravel, Dennis said: “The problem was rain and his [Hamilton’s] tyres were in the worst condition. But we weren’t racing Kimi [Raikkonen], we were basically racing Fernando [Alonso]”