Former McLaren boss Ron Dennis has donated £1 million to help frontline National Health Service (NHS) workers during the coronavirus pandemic.
Dennis’ family foundation has raised the money to support his newly-created initiative, SalutetheNHS, which aims to to provide food to key NHS staff as they fight the spread of the virus. The meals are aimed at ICU and anaesthetic teams as well as A&E staff who are unable to leave their wards due to current protocols surrounding Covid-19.
Companies such as Tesco, Absolute Taste and Yodel have signed on to support the initiative.
Speaking on the Good Morning Britain show, Dennis said: “Working with the hospital we can identify those members of the national health who are physically ill and we will be delivering to their door through Yodel a five-day food pack.
“There’s different types of food packs, we call it the Boost Pack which goes to the wards. All of the key front-liners, the anesthetists, the intensive careists and the A&E are clinically held in their areas. Thy cannot move between normal hospital rooms, they can’t go to the restaurant, so we are taking the restaurant to them.”
Dennis was head of McLaren’s operations between 1981 and 2017 and helped establish its Formula One team as one of the most successful in the sport’s history.
The coronavirus pandemic has indefinitely delayed the start of the F1 season but has already led to a raft of changes. The championship has delayed its massive rule change from 2020 to 2021 and has introduced several cost-cutting measures for the next few seasons.
Dennis’ successor in the McLaren job, Zak Brown, warned at the weekend F1 could lose up to four teams if it does not react to the pandemic in the right way.