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In his 15 years with Ferrari before joining McLaren in 2015, Stella witnessed three of F1’s greats close at hand in Michael Schumacher, Kimi Raikkonen, and Fernando Alonso.
Stella served as Schumacher’s performance engineer from 2002-2006, helping him become a seven-time champion in the process, before taking on the same role with Raikkonen, who won his only championship with the Italian at his side in 2007.
The 52-year-old served as Alonso’s race engineer during the two-time champion’s five-year tenure with the Scuderia from 2010-2014.
Stella is in no doubt Norris is on a similar glide path to success as those illustrious names, even if he has yet to win a grand prix in 104 starts.
The Briton, who signed a new extended contract last month, is confident he can get that monkey off his back this year, although remained guarded as to his future title chances.
Asked about Norris’ world champion potential, given his past relationships with Schumacher, Raikkonen and Alonso, Stella said: “Lando definitely stands together with them.
“It is the same category, the same kind of world championship material, the underlying talent, the mindset, the work ethos. It’s all ready to go.
“At the same time, when you think about champions, there is a characteristic of a champion in that they only get better. Real champions seem to just improve year by year.
“And I think that’s the case because they use their intelligence, their ethos, and they get the best people around them. They do whatever it takes to get better and better because the sport only gets more and more competitive.”
Stella feels from the outset of his time at McLaren, which started with an FP1 outing ahead of the 2018 Belgian Grand Prix, Norris has displayed the talent required to become a champion.
Since then, though, McLaren has failed to provide him with the car to underline his previously described potential – at least until last season when over the second half of the campaign Norris was a runner-up on six occasions.
Further extolling Norris’ virtues, Norris added: “Definitely we have all the raw material, which we saw already when Lando was doing the free practice one with us. It was very evident in 2018, and then it kept growing.
“It’s there. We just need to keep growing year after year like every champion does. But we are extremely happy and committed to Lando, in this respect.”
