Ron Dennis says the decision to replace Sergio Perez with Kevin Magnussen at McLaren for the 2014 season was his own.
The 66-year-old, who returned as McLaren Group CEO in January, added that the team "must" win races by the end of the year.
Magnussen stormed to the Formula Renault 3.5 championship last season with the DAMS team, beating fellow McLaren junior driver Stoffel Vandoorne by 60 points.
Some questioned the decision to replace Perez - who regularly matched Jenson Button during their time as team-mates at the Woking-based outfit - with the Danish rookie, but he has already made quite an impression after finishing on the podium in his first race.
"The decision to take Kevin was mine," Dennis said in an interview with the official Formula 1 website. "It was only possible to take Kevin because of my decision - that would be accurate.
"I took the decision because I felt that we needed to see if he could meet the expectations of our engineers, and so far he has done a great job."
Button is currently competing in his 15th F1 campaign and Dennis expects the Brit to stay with the team for 2015, despite promising young drivers like Vandoorne waiting in the wings.
"Anything is possible, but Jenson is doing a great job," he said. "He is quick and he is dedicated so there is no reason not to stay with Jenson from any perspective. But we still have a whole season to go."
Dennis described watching McLaren's disastrous 2013 campaign (which was their first without a podium in over 30 years) as "painful" and says the team "must" return to their winning ways by the end of the current season.
"I think we could win races in the later part of the season," he said. "I want to see a linear progression because we must end the season winning. This has to be our objective.
"We can’t win today. The fact is that F1 is less cyclical as a sport. We used to have a very clear winter closure – now it’s continuous. So if we don’t have the luxury of some regulation changes, we have to be competitive as soon as possible this year- and we will be."
Commenting on his return as Group CEO, he said: "It was a very personal decision. I can understand people interpret my decision in different ways, but I suppose the real turning point was when, after two months of being in a non-executive position, I realised all the things that my friends were doing: playing golf, fishing, sailing - all these things which I was able to do - I realised that the thing that I wanted to do more than anything else was work.
"I very much enjoy work, I very much enjoy Formula One - but I also feel I have unfinished business in the overall strategy for the future of the group."
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Magnussen stormed to the Formula Renault 3.5 championship last season with the DAMS team, beating fellow McLaren junior driver Stoffel Vandoorne by 60 points.
Some questioned the decision to replace Perez - who regularly matched Jenson Button during their time as team-mates at the Woking-based outfit - with the Danish rookie, but he has already made quite an impression after finishing on the podium in his first race.
"The decision to take Kevin was mine," Dennis said in an interview with the official Formula 1 website. "It was only possible to take Kevin because of my decision - that would be accurate.
"I took the decision because I felt that we needed to see if he could meet the expectations of our engineers, and so far he has done a great job."
Button is currently competing in his 15th F1 campaign and Dennis expects the Brit to stay with the team for 2015, despite promising young drivers like Vandoorne waiting in the wings.
"Anything is possible, but Jenson is doing a great job," he said. "He is quick and he is dedicated so there is no reason not to stay with Jenson from any perspective. But we still have a whole season to go."
Dennis described watching McLaren's disastrous 2013 campaign (which was their first without a podium in over 30 years) as "painful" and says the team "must" return to their winning ways by the end of the current season.
"I think we could win races in the later part of the season," he said. "I want to see a linear progression because we must end the season winning. This has to be our objective.
"We can’t win today. The fact is that F1 is less cyclical as a sport. We used to have a very clear winter closure – now it’s continuous. So if we don’t have the luxury of some regulation changes, we have to be competitive as soon as possible this year- and we will be."
Commenting on his return as Group CEO, he said: "It was a very personal decision. I can understand people interpret my decision in different ways, but I suppose the real turning point was when, after two months of being in a non-executive position, I realised all the things that my friends were doing: playing golf, fishing, sailing - all these things which I was able to do - I realised that the thing that I wanted to do more than anything else was work.
"I very much enjoy work, I very much enjoy Formula One - but I also feel I have unfinished business in the overall strategy for the future of the group."
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