New Years Honours for Ron Dennis and Christian Horner

Two big names from the world of Formula 1 have received honours in King Charles III's New Years Honours list, with Ron Dennis becoming a knight and Red Bull's Christian Horner getting a CBE.

Dennis was the long-time team principal of McLaren who began as a mechanic, working with Sir Jack Brabham and Ron Tauranac during the 1960s before founding his own race team called Rondel in the 1970s.

A lack of funding curtailed the operations; foray into F1, but Dennis secured backing from tobacco giant Marlboro for a F2 operation with his next try, Project Four Racing.

The team won races and championships in Marlboro's iconic red and white chevron colours and led to a merger with the existing McLaren F1 squad with Dennis becoming team principal.

He remained in charge for over two decades during which time he oversaw 158 Grand Prix wins and 17 championship victories before he departed in 2009 following the fallout of the Spygate scandal two years earlier.

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He made a brief return five years ater before being ousted by shareholders in 2017. The 76-year-old had previously been recognised for services to motorsport with a CBE, and the knighthood is for his charity work since he left F1.

Dennis was a founder of the Dreamchasing project that aims to reduce poverty around the world and is also chairman and founder of Podium Analytics and Tommy's, charities which help sports stars reduce injury.

They also support those who suffer complications and loss of children during pregnancy, respectively, as Dennis his and former wife Lisa lost a child of their own.

Dennis was previously a British Business Ambassador for the UK from 2010 to 2019 and a co-chair of the Defence Innovation Advisory Panel for the Ministry of Defence.

Also named in the New Years Honours is Red Bull boss Christian Horner who has been made a CBE for services to motorsport, having previously received an OBE in 2013.

“It was an unexpected distinction a decade ago to be presented with an OBE," Horner said on Friday night. "To receive this second award, a CBE, is one for which I am hugely grateful and deeply honoured.

"It is a great privilege to lead and work alongside such a phenomenal team as Oracle Red Bull Racing and also to work in an industry that contributes so much to the United Kingdom’s economy.

"I am enormously proud of what we have achieved with Red Bull in Formu and in the wider high technology arena and I am hugely honoured to be recognised for that effort.”

It comes after a season in which Red Bull won 21 out of 22 races on the way to pulling off both championship titles and securing the top two positions in the drivers championship for the first time in the history of the organisation.

“I don't think we'll ever see a repeat, certainly not in our lifetimes, of what we've managed to do this year with a car that's achieved the kind of dominance of RB19,” he said in end-of-season comments last month.

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