Is Ron Dennis coming back? The departure of Max Mosley as president of the FIA has changed the landscape of Formula One in a sudden and unexpected way and there are certain individuals, Dennis among them, who will feel more able to enjoy their sport than hitherto.

The former group chairman and chief executive of McLaren Mercedes was one of Mosley’s biggest enemies. Under Dennis’s watch, McLaren were hit by the FIA with a £50 million sanction for cheating in 2007, regarded as the biggest fine in sporting history.

Then Dennis was forced out of his job this year in what some in the sport believe was a deal struck with the FIA to limit the punishment that the team would receive as a result of Lewis Hamilton and their former sporting director, Dave Ryan, lying to the stewards at the Australian Grand Prix.

Dennis has since gone to the motor racing equivalent of Siberia — a new McLaren sports car production project — but, much as he is enjoying his new role, there can be little doubt that he will be tempted back to Formula One now that his nemesis has been removed.

The team were coy about it on Thursday, pointing out that Dennis will not be coming back to the pitwall or taking over the team principal duties now fulfilled by Martin Whitmarsh. But returning to racetracks on grands-prix weekends is certainly back on the agenda. As one source put it: “Racegoers might be seeing a little more of him from now.”

Although Dennis has never been far from controversy in the past couple of years, he is still regarded highly by his peers and many team principals believe that he was unfairly treated by the FIA under the presidency of Mosley.

Indeed, the fine imposed on McLaren and the way in which he was forced out this year are cited by some leading figures in the Formula One Teams Association as among the reasons why they could not bring themselves to enter into a budget-cap environment policed by Mosley.