narrowly beaten in both championships by the Renault F1 team. A further blow was the announcement that Adrian Newey was to join Red Bull Racing from the start of 2006. In December 2005, McLaren announced a title sponsorship deal with Vodafone estimated to be worth £500 million and the signing of World Champion Fernando Alonso, both to begin in 2007. In the interim, McLaren had a difficult 2006 season, failing to win a race for the first time since the 1996 season. Halfway through the 2006 season, McLaren gave up on perfecting their current car and the team focused on the 2007 MP4-22 car. The start of the 2007 season saw McLaren a strong challenger for the world championships, with both Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton in contention for the drivers' championship. However, throughout the season the team suffered from the in-fighting between Alonso and Hamilton; Dennis always advocated treating his two drivers equally, however after the Chinese Grand Prix, he said "We weren't racing Kimi, we were basically racing Fernando." The Times said his comments "made a nonsense of his claims to be treating his drivers equitably in the World Championship run-in" but the team's insistence on parity until the very final race in Brazil underlined Dennis's core philosophy even if it ultimately lost the team the world championship. The season was also notable for the 2007 Formula One espionage controversy, where the team was judged to have been complicit in the theft and use of Ferrari intellectual property, fined a record $100 million by the FIA, and stripped of all constructor championship points for the season. Final years at McLaren Ron Dennis initially owned all of McLaren after buying out the original shareholders after Bruce McLaren's death. In 1983 he offered Mansour Ojjeh the chance to purchase 50% of the team, with McLaren becoming a joint venture with Ojjeh's TAG Group. In 2000, after supplying engines to the team through its Mercedes subsidiary for five years, DaimlerChrysler AG (now Daimler AG) exercised an option to buy 40% of the TAG McLaren Group. Dennis and Ojjeh each retained a 30% share. In August 2006 it was reported that Daimler was considering acquiring the remaining 60% of the McLaren Group. However, it was announced in January 2007 that the Mumtalakat Holding Company (the sovereign wealth fund of the Kingdom of Bahrain) had purchased 15% each from both Dennis and Ojjeh.