McLaren ‘weakened’ by losses – Whitmarsh
The stalwart Tyler Alexander was the first to go, and now the 'lie-gate' scandal has cost McLaren its long-serving team manager Dave Ryan.
Ron Dennis, moreover – at the helm for nearly three decades – on Thursday announced he will no longer be involved in the Woking based team in any capacity.
"Any company is going to miss people of that sort of quality, especially when they go all at once," Force India's business affairs chief Ian Phillips told the BBC from Shanghai.
Even Whitmarsh, Dennis' successor, does not deny the significance of McLaren's recent departures.
"If I sat here and said we are not weakened at all it wouldn't be true," he told reporters in China.
Whitmarsh, however, said McLaren's organization has "enough depth and capability" to fill the vacancies without recruiting externally.