It has had some pretty tough competition, but 2009 will be remembered as the fieriest season in recent years. With Lie-Gate, the threat of a breakaway series and the infamous Crash-Gate, Formula One’s political infighting reached an all time high during the past year. Not that it hasn’t been a fantastic yarn or damned exciting from an outsider’s perspective, but F1 has lost, very sadly, some key figures that lent more than a little magic to this greatest of racing series.

Dennis’ cards had been marked, for sometime, and it was little surprise that he made the announcement, during the launch of the MP4-24, to step down from his role as team principal. However, following Mosley’s misplaced sense of duty to rid the sport of sleaze, during the fallout of Lie-Gate, the greatly respected figure that had headed up McLaren’s operations for almost three decades, was apparently banned from the paddock altogether. What ensued was not the publicly drawn-out execution of an F1 celebrity like Flavio Briatore, but a more measured and targeted attack, operating in the shadows, and judged by many, to be an expression of Mosley’s anger over the News of the World expose of his private life.

Yet, truth be told, connections linking Dennis to the revelations about Mosley’s sex life were altogether baseless as an association between an earlier courtroom battle involving Rupert Murdoch’s media empire News Corporation and Max Mosley surfaced. All in all, the News of the World inspired headline “F1 boss has sick Nazi orgy with 5 hookers” was apparently just revenge by the Murdoch owned NOTW. Shame.

So why does Mosley detest the McLaren man so deeply? Well, as suggested by the respected F1 journalist, Joe Saward, a rumour still persists that the mutual dislike has simmered ever since a paddock encounter saw a disagreement over the correct etiquette for the use of knives and forks. Knowing F1, this may or may not be true, but it most certainly, probably is. The only certainty is that for longer than I have been alive, the pair has exchanged letters in thinly veiled attempts to publicly belittle each other, with the most famous incident occurring in Sepang, during the 2000 Malaysian Grand Prix.

“You do a lot of damage when, as a team principal, you constantly suggest that the F1 World Championship is not fairly run,” was Mosley’s eloquently cured response to the then recent comments made by Dennis regarding the impartiality of the FIA and its appointed stewards and officials. Interestingly enough, almost a decade on, and the allegations persist as to the governing body’s ability to rule fairly, and in the ever-present irony of F1, it would appear that this question of neutrality was Dennis’s downfall.

Aside from this rather explicit fighting with Mosley, Dennis was a largely divisive figure. Though always respected, Ron Dennis polarised opinions because of his “my way or the high way” attitude to team management that saw a savage and much-publicised fall-out as recently as 2007 with Spanish favourite and Nandos Chicken endorser Fernando Alonso. Any rumours of favouritism, were quickly quashed by Woking’s crack team of PR guru’s, yet nothing could be done to quell this particular anecdotal gem of David Coulthard’s, in his autobiography ‘It Is What It Is’,

“The first sign that there might be specific favouritism towards Mika came in Melbourne 1996, I was with my race engineer and Mika was chatting to his.”

“The door opened and Ron walked in. I stood up to shake his hand and Ron ignored me. Instead he strode over to sit next to Mika and said, ‘What’s the plan (for the race), guys?’ We all listened to Mika’s plans and then Ron said, ‘OK, what are they doing?’

“Here was my team principal talking about me as if I was a rival team. ‘They’ is not a word you use in a team situation, surely?”

The experience seemed to match perfectly with what Fernando Alonso had described, and brought fresh questions regarding Dennis’ suitability as a team principal. Yet despite it all, Dennis will remain one of the most capable and visionary leaders in Formula One. Seeing him downed was the first, but certainly not the last act in Max Mosley’s political swansong.

“I think that Flavio Briatore sees himself as the Bernie [Ecclestone of the new series].” This was the sentiment echoed during Jake Humphrey’s now infamous interview with Max Mosley. It was as clear a sentiment as any as to whom the president of the FIA should direct his anger following the threat of a breakaway. Though not in name, Flavio Briatore behaved as the new ringleader for the proposed faction and this certainly ensured he was in the firing line when Max came knocking.

Fresh from delivering the head of Dennis, Mosley was now on the warpath with F1’s newest aggressor. This time, events outside of his control were to guarantee that arch-enemy Briatore’s downfall was all but signed. The story of Crashgate has many faces, and whether you regard it with mock disdain or real horror, there is no undervaluing the impact it has had both within and outside Formula One. Briatore’s punishment was swift and by all accounts harsh considering the involvement and subsequent lack of penalisation for Piquet Jr.

His colour and flair for business were the perfect accompaniment to Bernie Ecclestone’s determination to turn F1 into a global industry. Without Schumacher, whose career Briatore helped launch into the spotlight with two World Championships after a well-placed poach from Jordan, the commercial success of Formula One could well have been vastly different. Not that Flavio’s eye for talent was always so effectual, with some of his past driver choices springing to mind, yet entertainment was always at the forefront of his decisions, as clearly demonstrated by that fetching thong.

In all seriousness, Mosley’s last actions as president were to guarantee some very positive economic steps towards self-sufficiency for Formula One, yet his very-public personal vendettas cost the series some of its greatest characters and nearly, with little exaggeration, its very existence.