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McLaren has transformed itself following a slow start to 2023 into a race winner in little more than 12 months.
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are more than just front runners, they have proved genuine challengers for race wins.
Andrea Stella heads McLaren’s F1 operation, having taken over as team principal from Andreas Seidl prior to the start of last season.
The ex-Ferrari man quickly restructured the technical department, which is otherwise largely unchanged – the same group that designed the initial MCL60 was responsible for the upgrade that transformed it.
Stella is not one to take sole credit and is always quick to pass it on to those he leads.
While he has a point, he is just the figurehead of the operation in essence, he’s far more than that; under his leadership and following his decisions, the team has been transformed.
In Miami, that transformation was arguably completed as McLaren beat Red Bull Racing on track to win. From last in the constructors’ championship after the opening two rounds of 2023, McLaren was back on top.
It wasn’t McLaren’s first win in recent times, Daniel Ricciardo won the 2021 Italian Grand Prix, but there was something more genuine about it; Miami didn’t feel like a flash in the pan, it felt like the start of something. It felt like the moment McLaren became a genuine contender once more.
“I am not confident,” Stella admitted to Speedcafe in a candid interview.
Sat above the pit lane in Monaco ahead of the weekend, the team was riding high; it had won in Miami and come close in Imola just a week earlier.
And yet here sat the man in charge of the form team at the moment, admitting he was uncertain whether that was genuine. It was a fascinating insight into the mind of an engineer turned team boss who has enjoyed success with Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso.
“I am not joking,” he doubled down.
“I only know that, if we want this to perpetuate and repeat itself over time, we need to deliver performance to the car.
“We need, everyone needs, to deliver the projects that we are working on.”
Stella leads by example, praising where praise is warranted but never shying away from his or the team’s failings.
In Imola, he immediately took responsibility for the penalty that saw Oscar Piastri relegated from second on the grid to fifth. He was open and honest, acknowledging that it wasn’t good enough and the team had let Piastri down.
But he also empowers his staff, highlighting their efforts at every opportunity.
In Miami, when asked what his first win as McLaren’s team principal meant, he pivoted his answer to speak about and praise the team’s efforts.
“Leaders need to lead by simple and clear objectives to the people that can then be empowered to do their job,” he reasoned.
“This is the only thing I know. There are a few more, but I don’t want to disclose our approach to things.”
Stella’s focus is on the people and the process, not the outcome. Trust in those and, by his rationale, the outcome will take care of itself.
“Results come to us,” he asserted. “It’s not us going to results.”
Under Stella’s leadership, McLaren has arguably led the way in terms of development since the start of last year—a campaign that began with the honest admission that the car had missed its development targets. There was no panic, just a resolve to address the situation.
A small upgrade in Azerbaijan laid the groundwork for a sizeable package in Austria. From there, the steep upward trajectory has been maintained, an impressive feat as class leaders Red Bull Racing seem to have had its development rate slow.
It’s that continued effort and growth for Stella that offers him confidence for the future – not the finishing position on any given Sunday.
“Confidence… What is confidence? It’s a psychological thing,” he suggested.
“It’s the work that gives you confidence.
“When I worked with some champions in the past, they were not getting the confidence because they were going to the psychiatrist.
“The confidence was coming from the work they were doing.
“The confidence came from knowing, like ‘I think none of my competitors is working like I’m doing’, and then the confidence was growing.”
To Stella, confidence is a direct correlation to work ethic and work rate.
The problem is, in an environment as competitive as Formula 1, where going above and beyond is the norm, it stands to reason that he is never confident. Everyone else is doing the same thing, chasing the same goal. Knowing that is knowing that it could all be gone tomorrow. This could be the start of a new era for McLaren, or it could be a flash in the pan. The truth is, nobody knows, not even Stella.
“So I’m not confident at all,” he reiterated.
“I only know that we need to elaborate our way forward, stick with it, and believe that will take us there, because we won’t want to be too distracted.”
