McLaren F1 boss Andrea Stella lays out clear priorities

With Formula 1’s team principal merry-go-round coming to a gradual end, McLaren’s new team principal Andrea Stella says he wants “continuation” of what preceded him as he sets his sites on upgrading the infrastructure for the Woking-based F1 team.

Stella joined the team in 2015 as Head of Race Operations and has held various positions since, including Performance Director and Executive Director. Prior to joining McLaren, the Italian spent 15 years at Ferrari as a Performance Engineer for Michael Schumacher and Kimi Räikkönen from 2002 to 2008. He was then promoted and worked as a Race Engineer for Räikkönen and Fernando Alonso from 2009 to 2015.

Speaking to the media, Stella said that while he plans to continue the direction set by his predecessor Andreas Seidl, he also sees opportunities for improvement.

“In terms of how we continue for the future, there’s clearly elements of continuation,” Stella said.

“I think we worked very well with Andreas. We established some very important directions and we do want to consolidate them. At the same time, the complexity of Formula 1 leaves the business always open for opportunities.”

Upgrades

One area where Stella hopes to make progress is in delivering a quicker car.

“In terms of areas of opportunities, I think, where we definitely would like to make a step forward is delivering a quick car,” the 51-year-old Italian said.

“Some of the reasons why we haven’t been able to do that so far. We know that they are quite structural, and there’s really good action and investments going on at McLaren so that we can overcome these limitations.”

To that end, Stella said that completing the team’s new infrastructure, including a wind tunnel and simulator, is a priority.

“We have important infrastructure coming to fruition in 2023 like the wind tunnel, the new simulator, and I think completing this business is certainly one of my priorities,” he said.

Stella also plans to expand the team’s aerodynamics department in order to strengthen that area.

“We want to make some areas of the team stronger. We know enough about Formula 1 [so that] we know it is fundamentally an aerodynamic game. So no surprise that one of the areas we want to get stronger is on the aerodynamic side,” he said.

“I think we have incredible talent, possibly we need to expand manpower in that area, and that’s also one of the projects that are ongoing which will certainly grant continuity.”

Overall, Stella said his goal is to help McLaren achieve its mission of success on the track.

“It’s day one [in the] job for me, but this is what I’m thinking about intensively and what I will be thinking about together with my leaders at McLaren so that we can find further opportunities to go even faster towards achieving our mission.”

Stella will be working with a young driver team next season with 23-year-old Lando Norris and 21-year-old Oscar Piastri. McLaren will be keen to get Piastri up and running so the papaya team can start to aim up towards the top threes team rather than battling with Renault.