The fact that there is nothing metaphorical about the pain of defeat as far as Ron Dennis is concerned should reassure supporters of Lewis Hamilton who are worried that the news that the McLaren boss is likely to announce he will be taking on another role this week, could hinder the young driver.

If Dennis believed what he has referred to as “taking a badge off and giving it to someone else” would have an adverse effect on a driver whose career he has nurtured, and subsequently been rewarded by the emergence of a talent that Sir Frank Williams said last week was comparable to that of Jim Clark, it almost certainly wouldn’t be happening. It is only the knowledge that his enemies will seize on any announcement as the beginning of the end for a man who has become one of the most successful team owners in a ferociously competitive international sport that is giving Dennis serious pause for thought.

But even those adversaries, and there are many, could not deny Dennis has earnt the right to make such a decision on his terms. McLaren, established by the New Zealand race driver Bruce McLaren in 1963, had two drivers’ world championships to its name (won by Emerson Fitti-paldi in 1974 and James Hunt in 1976) but had not won a grand prix for almost three years when it merged with Dennis’s fledg-ling Formula Two team in 1980.

It was significant that Dennis, who despite his detractors’ insinuations to the contrary, has always been aware and respectful of the power of tradition, knew better than to change the name, and set about building the empire now housed in the stunning Norman Foster-designed McLaren Technology Centre, a short drive from Dennis’s birthplace in Woking.

Nine drivers’ and seven constructors’ world championships in that time tell only part of the story of a group that, under the leadership of Dennis, has also developed profitable businesses in high-performance road cars, automotive electronic systems, marketing and applied technologies.

However, it is also true that there has been no championship victory of either kind since 1999, a drought that should have come to an end last year when the drivers’ title slipped from Hamilton’s grasp. Those who claim Dennis was fortunate Hamilton arrived in Formula One as pretty much the finished article fail to acknowledge the part McLaren played in nurturing his talent in the first place, a process that began 10 years ago when Dennis signed him to his driver development programme.

While always promising, Hamilton did not blaze an unstoppable trail through the junior formulae as some believe. Only in 2005 did he begin to look like something special, winning 15 out of 20 races in the Formula Three Euroseries. Yet even then Autosport magazine did not rank him in its top 20 drivers of the year. If McLaren and Dennis got lucky, foresight, investment and patience have been equally important, and Hamilton knows and acknowledges as much.

What will be crucial as far as Hamilton and the McLaren staff are concerned is that whatever role Dennis chooses to play in the future, or whichever badge he wears, he is still directly involved. Despite appearing retiring and robotic to the armchair viewer, Dennis is a remarkably charismatic man who inspires loyalty among those who work for him.

Dennis himself is possibly unaware of the extent to which this loyalty is purely personal. While he works for and devotes himself to the company, many of those around him work for and are devoted to him. “After something has gone wrong, whether it’s been a bad race or whatever, you can get into work feeling down, but it only takes a few words from Ron and bang, you’re back up and buzzing and ready to do whatever it takes to put things right,“ a McLaren employee once told me.

“Of course you want to do it for your own pride and satisfaction, and for your teammates, and to be part of the sport’s history and all that. But it’s about doing it for Ron, too. You come away feeling that if he said running at a brick wall would help, you’d put your head down and charge.”

This is a side of Dennis, a shy man whose efforts not to say the wrong thing to journalists occasionally lead him to use a sentence structure so convoluted, and consequently opaque, it has been christened “Ronspeak”, that the average Formula One supporter simply never sees. But this inspirational personality has its dangers, too. Without him around, there is a possibility that McLaren would begin to haemor-rhage talent.

Whether that would include Hamilton – coveted by Ferrari – should not be an issue, given Dennis recently signed the 23-year-old to a new five-year deal from which he will earn a basic £10m per year. There are probably many who will say money was the main reason Hamilton committed himself to such a long contract. The truth is that Hamilton, his father Anthony and Dennis are close enough for claims that the negotiations were straightforward to be believable. “This announcement will take the length of our relationship with Lewis to a total of 15 years, which we believe is among the longest-running associations between a sportsman and a team in the history of sport, particularly motorsport,” said Dennis.

“This is a great achievement for everyone involved, including Anthony. Lewis is an exceptional human being, on both a personal and professional level, and will continue to be a credit to this team.”

While signing a contract of a certain length, as the cases of Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso have recently demonstrated, does not invariably mean a driver will be with the team until that term expires, it most likely will in this case – as long, of course, as Dennis is around.

The key for Dennis may be to remain available and involved while letting others take care of the details. It will not be easy for someone who is a notorious perfectionist. When on a tour of the Technology Centre with Dennis as my guide, he took me to the kitchens. Every gleaming stainless steel cupboard and work-surface was covered by yellow Postit notes where he had spotted a flaw he wanted corrected.

“You may write the history,” he once told a gathering of journalists. “But we at McLaren make that history.” Ron Dennis and Lewis Hamilton, you feel, will be making history together for some time yet.

The Ron Dennis CV

- In 1966, aged 19, Dennis joined the Cooper Formula One team, later becoming chief mechanic at Brabham

- His Project Four team won Formula Three titles in 1979 and 1980, when it merged with McLaren Formula One

In 1984 McLaren won the constructors’ championship, with Niki Lauda also winning the drivers’ title for the team. Since then McLaren have won the constructors’ championship six times and the drivers’ title eight times n Dennis was made a CBE in 2000 and, in 2006, was placed 648th on the Sunday Times Rich List. Last month he separated from his wife of 22 years, Lisa

How Spygate did for Dennis

JUN 21 Ferrari initiate a criminal investigation against their head of development Nigel Stepney

JUL 3 Ferrari confi rm they are taking action against Stepney concerning the alleged theft of technical information. The team says a McLaren employee is involved, later revealed to be Mike Coughlan. The FIA announces its own investigation

JUL 12 FIA World Motor Sport Council (WMSC) summons McLaren to answer evidence that they had used the stolen data. Two weeks later, McLaren is found guilty of breaching the sporting code, but there is no proof that it made use of the data to its advantage

SEP 13 The FIA imposes a £50m fi ne and strips McLaren of its constructors’ points after Fernando Alonso admits receiving confi dential Ferrari information via Coughlan. WMSC fi nds that several other McLaren employees possessed the information and intended to use it. Three months later, Dennis issues a statement admitting his team’s guilt and apologising for its behaviour