Martin Whitmarsh: I was ready to retire after a life in F1 - then Sir Ben Ainslie rang about America's Cup

As Formula One prepares for its season-opening race in Melbourne on Sunday, one of its former stalwarts, a man who left the sport under something of a cloud last year and has not been heard from since, is busy preparing for a new challenge. Only this time on water.

The Daily Telegraph can reveal that Martin Whitmarsh, the former McLaren team principal and chief executive of The McLaren Group, will be announced today as the new CEO of Ben Ainslie Racing, the team founded by Britain’s four-time Olympic gold medallist with the aim of retrieving the America’s Cup and bringing it back to British waters for the first time since the inaugural competition was held off the Isle of Wight in 1851.

Whitmarsh, who will take a seat on the board and report to Ainslie, BAR’s team principal, was recommended to the yachtsman by a number of high-profile figures within motorsport, among them Red Bull’s Christian Horner and Adrian Newey. The latter is already committed to working for BAR as part of a consultancy agreement between the fledgling Portsmouth-based team and Red Bull Advanced Technologies.

Whitmarsh admitted the prospect of working with Formula One’s pre-eminent designer again, after the pair spent nine years together at McLaren between 1997 and 2006, was a key factor behind his decision to join BAR, although he claimed he needed little persuading once he had sat down with Ainslie.

^{Whitmarsh (right) took time out after leaving McLaren. ACTION IMAGES}

“Ben came to see me at my house a couple of weeks ago and it was an easy sell,” he said. “There were no negotiations. Frankly, within minutes of talking to Ben I knew I wanted to do it. I rang him the next morning to accept.”

Since that meeting, Whitmarsh has been out in Borneo, where his daughter, an anthropologist, is working on a project with orangutans.

It was the last trip in what he describes as a “life-changing” nine months since he walked out of the McLaren Technology Centre for the last time, having been ousted as team principal last January following a lengthy power struggle with Ron Dennis.

Whitmarsh declined to discuss his departure, or even the current goings-on at McLaren (“I’m still too close to it all”) but said he did not regret his decision and would almost certainly never go back.

“It has been good for my soul,” he said of his mid-life gap year. “I mean, you’re the first journalist I have spoken to in 12 months. I’ve been travelling. I’ve been able to spend more time with my kids who are grown up now. My son is a music photographer so I’ve helped him set up a bit. I’ve been out to visit my daughter in Uganda and Rwanda and Borneo, and see what she is doing. I feel quite energised by it all. Formula One is a sport that can take over your life, it can consume you. And I think it got pretty close to doing that with me.

“But I know I’m a lucky, lucky man. I had an amazing 25 years and never have to work again if I don’t want to. Whatever I do now should be because I want to do something fresh.”

^{Ainslie's main ambition is to win the America's Cup with a British team. GETTY IMAGES}

That opportunity has arrived, unexpectedly, in the shape of BAR, who will be competing for the 35th America’s Cup in Bermuda in 2017.

Whitmarsh will begin his role next month, just a few weeks before the team move from their temporary offices in Whiteley to a new state-of-the-art facility in Camber Quay.

“I think it’s a real statement,” he said of the new base, which is partly inspired by McLaren’s Norman Foster-designed headquarters in Woking. “It says ‘yes, this is a team setting out to win the next America’s Cup’ but we also want to grow a business.

“That is what I have been brought in to help do. If I look back at my 25 years at McLaren, we developed from a business with fewer than 100 people to over 3000 people, a business that went from £19 million turnover to over £600  million.

^{Red Bull mastermind Adrian Newey has taken up a consultancy role with BAR. GETTY IMAGES}

“I take huge pride in that. I take pride in the fact that we won over 100 grands prix and eight world championship, too, but the thing that gave me the biggest satisfaction was developing the team; recruiting people as raw young graduates who later became the engineering directors or MDs of businesses within the Group.”

On the subject of Newey, needed more than ever by Red Bull as they strive to close the gap to Mercedes, Whitmarsh admits it will be “a battle” with Horner for his time.

“The fact is, Red Bull invest an awful lot of money in Formula One,” he said. “And if I was Christian, I would be doing all I could to have Adrian focused 100 per cent on F1. But I think someone like Adrian – who is immensely creative – needs an outlet, and I think that we can offer him that.

“Christian is positive about it. In fairness, both he and Adrian, and I know Dave Richards at Prodrive as well, have all been very positive. They were all agitating with me, and agitating with Ben as well, for us to come together.”

Whitmarsh has not forgotten his first love. He was “delighted” when his former charge, Lewis Hamilton, blazed his way to his second title last autumn. Hamilton even invited Whitmarsh to a race towards the back end of the season, but Whitmarsh declined, believing it would have been “awkward” to be in Mercedes’ motor home rather than McLaren’s. He still supports his former team, and will be up at 5am on Sunday to watch events unfold in Albert Park.

“I can’t help myself,” he said. “Last year I tried not to watch it. It was still too raw. We went to a place in the Indian Ocean and both myself and Debs, my wife, said we weren’t going to watch it. Then I think one of us caught the other one on the iPad. We had both surreptitiously got the App up on our screens in the middle of the Indian Ocean, that’s how sad we were. But I’ve moved on. I cannot wait to start this project with BAR now.”