MANSOUR OJJEH
A visionary figure who was a key driving force behind Mclaren’s renaissance in the 1980s
An appreciation of the quiet man who helped Mclaren to the top
Great sadness fell upon motorsport when Mansour Ojjeh died in Geneva at the age of 68 on the morning of the recent Azerbaijan GP. He was the quiet tower of strength who had no need of the spotlight and stood alongside partner Ron Dennis at Mclaren as they changed the face of Formula 1.
Born to a Syrian father who emigrated to France during World War II and a French mother, Mansour was raised in Paris where he attended the American School before going to California in 1970 to study business administration.
In the intervening years Mansour’s father Akram, who had been the publisher of Le Monde Arabe in Paris, had become a business agent for Saudi Arabia’s royal family and taken Saudi citizenship. By the 1970s he was Saudi defence minister Prince Sultan’s favoured middle man, and won significant commissions on contracts to supply arms, aircraft and other essential items. In 1974 he created the Techniques d’avant Garde (TAG) company to develop the technologies. Akram’s well-educated son joined him in the middle of the decade.
Mansour discovered motor racing at the age of 25 when he was invited to attend the Monaco GP in 1978 as a guest of the Saudi royal family who owned Saudia Airlines, the primary sponsor of Frank Williams’s revived F1 team. This ignited a passion, and TAG became a key sponsor of the team for 1979. That coincided with the arrival of Patrick Head’s ground-effect FW07 with which Clay Regazzoni scored the team’s first victory, at Silverstone. Alan Jones won four more, laying the foundation for drivers’ and constructors’ world championships in 1980. Williams took constructors’ honours again in 1981, and the drivers’ title with Keke Rosberg in 1982.
Mclaren, meanwhile, had been regrouping fast after Marlboro had put Ron Dennis in charge in 1980. But even as John Watson scored Mclaren’s first victory since 1977 in John Barnard’s revolutionary MP4/1 at the 1981 British GP, Dennis knew a turbo engine would be essential. After approaching Porsche to create a bespoke V6, he attracted TAG sponsorship to finance the deal as Ojjeh shared his vision to make Mclaren the best. They set up TAG Turbo Engines and, to Ron and John Barnard’s chagrin after Niki Lauda pulled a fast one with Marlboro, the engine had to be raced earlier than they had wanted – in the 1983 Dutch GP in the prototype MP4/1E. By 1984 the enforced public development work paid off handsomely, however, as Lauda and Alain Prost won 12 of the 16 races, and Lauda pipped Prost to the title by half a point. Mclaren won again in 1985 and 1986 with Prost, before the switch to Honda for 1988 set the stage for further domination with the Frenchman and Ayrton Senna. Later, with Mercedes power, Mclaren won further titles with Mika Häkkinen and then Lewis Hamilton.
Mansour had become the majority shareholder in TAG Mclaren Holdings in 1984, and he and Dennis established an unbeatable modus operandi of always voting together. As they maintained full control, Mclaren flourished. Ojjeh was one of the driving forces behind the creation of Gordon Murray’s F1 road car, TAG Electronics and Mclaren Automotive.
A quiet, generous and caring man of innate humility, Mansour understood the gift of inspiring, empowering and supporting people, then trusting them to fulfil their potential. Away from racing, he led the family business down fresh avenues as it turned the long-established Heuer company into the TAG Heuer global brand. Later came TAG Aviation which distributed Bombardier’s Canadair Challenger twin-engined executive jets, interests in hotels and real estate, and the TAG Aviation executive jets charter business.
As Ojjeh was first struck by the idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) disease which required a double lung transplant in 2013, his relationship with Dennis began to break down. Fanciful rumours abounded, but most credible was that Ojjeh objected to the discussions his younger brothers had with Dennis over the future of his stake in Mclaren, while he was fighting for his life. The relationship had already been weakened when Mansour and Ron had disagreed about the Bahrain GP in 2011; Mansour was said to be in favour of it being held, whereas Ron disagreed that going ahead was apposite because of the political tensions. At the end of 2016 the unthinkable happened as Mansour and the other Mclaren partners voted to buy Ron out of the business he and Ojjeh had turned into one of the greatest race teams of all time.
Mansour recovered slowly, and made periodic visits to races. But though he was instrumental in engaging Daniel Ricciardo, and son Sultan took over as a Mclaren director and board member, he knew he was living on borrowed time.
Current Mclaren CEO Zak Brown said: “Mansour was probably the best human being I’ve ever come across.
No one will have anything other than great things to say about him. I’ve never met someone who didn’t think he was an unbelievable individual. I understand why now, having worked for him. Mclaren was his family. And everyone at Mclaren was family.”
Hamilton said: “He was a big brother to me. He had the biggest heart and always carried the biggest smile. He fought for so many years with such courage and the heart of a lion. I am so grateful to have known such a man. I will miss his jokes, and his big hugs. This man loved unconditionally.”
Much-loved can be an over-used description, but in Mansour Ojjeh’s case it is both apposite and accurate.