Martin Whitmarsh (born April 29 1958) is the CEO of McLaren Racing, a subsidiary company of the McLaren Group and Chief Operating Officer of that group, as well as Team Principal of Vodafone McLaren Mercedes, following Ron Dennis' retirement on 1 March 2009.

Career

Whitmarsh graduated from University of Portsmouth with a degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1980, and started work at British Aerospace (now BAE Systems) as a structural analysis engineer at its Hamble-le-Rice facility. He was promoted to an advanced composite structures research and development role and transferred to BAe's Weybridge facility. In 1988 he was promoted to the rank of Manufacturing Director and was put in charge of Hawk and Harrier airframe production. He left to join McLaren as Head of Operations in .

In , Whitmarsh was promoted to Managing Director, where he was responsible for managing the F1 operation and its partners and sponsors. This allowed Team Principal Ron Dennis to concentrate on other aspects of the McLaren Group. In April , he was again promoted, this time to the position of CEO of the company's F1 operation.

Martin Whitmarsh became team principal on March 1, 2009, replacing Ron Dennis.

McLaren

On 1st March 2009 Ron Dennis stepped down as head of McLaren Racing to take a role in McLaren Automotive as he planned to expand the company's current operation in car manufacturing. As Martin took over running of team principal. During his first season as team prinicipal the team had a terrible start but recovered in the 2nd half of the season. The team beat ferrari by a bare point to take 3rd in the Constructors' championship as well. McLaren scored the most points in the second half of the season. 2nd most points being scored in the second half of the season by Ferrari.

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