Andrea Stella interview: “Throughout the entire team, everyone is stepping up"
Our Team Principal speaks in-depth about the season so far, our 2023 upgrade plan and the new technical team
Reading Time: 14.5 minutes
When Andrea Stella was announced as Team Principal last December, few outside of the McLaren Technology Centre walls knew what to expect, but CEO Zak Brown knew exactly what he was getting.
The 52-year-old Italian has been at McLaren since 2015, when he joined as Head of Race Operations, following 15 years with Ferrari, where he worked with Michael Schumacher, Kimi Räikkönen and Fernando Alonso. Anyone who has worked with him in any capacity will know precisely what he is about and why Zak was so keen to install him as McLaren’s new Team Principal.
What no one could have anticipated is just how much would happen over the following eight months, which has included an overhauling of our technical leadership structure, significant upgrades to the factory and the delivery of a podium-scoring race car ahead of schedule, to name just three highlights.
We covered all of these topics and more during the course of a captivating hour in his company, speaking in his office between the Belgian Grand Prix and the start of summer shutdown.
We experienced an expectedly tough start to the season. How do you feel we dealt with this as a team?
As you say, we expected the start of the season to be difficult. The first thing we said internally was, ‘Let's stay calm. No fluctuations from an emotional point of view, no highs and lows.’ If you let dysfunctional emotions take over, you can get carried away, even if you are an F1 team. We needed to stay focused on ourselves and on delivering performance through car upgrades. Early on, we gained a good understanding of what we needed to do. We just needed to concentrate on the knowledge we had gained and generate further know-how and use an efficient workflow to produce the required developments. If we did that, we knew the results would start coming to us.
I have to say, I have personally been very impressed by how the team handled the situation. We did stay stable and focused. This confirmed, in my view, how strong our culture was and how the vision was genuinely shared, as it is in the difficult times when you need to lean on your culture and your vision the most. We were strong at this as a team, and Zak and I were very pleased. Having gone through such a difficult period, I think everyone at McLaren Racing should feel proud.
However, in the F1 business, you cannot afford to be complacent for more than a second, and, immediately after, you have to look forward to the next challenge with humility.
Speaking of looking forwards, what have you learned in your first eight months as Team Principal that will help you in the long term?
The main and most important thing I've learned as a Team Principal is about the team itself. In order to be effective in my role, to support everyone, and to get the most out of our potential as a team, you need to have a very in-depth knowledge of the team, of how we work, of what talent is available and of the various characteristics, weaknesses and strengths. Some team members are suited to lead, some others are more effective in self-referential tasks. Everyone, whichever characteristics they own or display, is crucial and has a part to play. In every area and for any project, we must put in place the most suitable combination of skills, talent, and leadership and always try to enjoy what we do.
Focus is on knowledge and information, so that what to do next becomes almost a natural derivation of what you know. Rather than ‘What should I do?’ it should be ‘What do I know?’ Focusing on knowing the team has been the main activity since day one for myself, supported by Zak and in collaboration with Daniel Gallo , our Chief People Officer at McLaren Racing.
From the track to the factory Andrea Stella
Is this why you’ve been so hands-on as Team Principal in terms of spending a lot of time with people in the factory?
Yes, that's exactly how we will achieve our objective of knowing our people, of knowing the business, the tasks, the workflows, and knowing what the most effective approach is. Some workflows are more efficient, and some are less efficient. Some standards can be high, but not high enough to win in F1. Even if you initially think that you know the most efficient way of working, you might realise that there is a better way of working or that higher standards are possible. As a Team Principal, you can only know this if you are present and embedded in the team.
When travelling to races, being present can become quite a challenge for a Team Principal. In order to guarantee continuity of presence and of leadership action, Piers Thynne has been appointed as Chief Operating Officer. Effectively, Piers, who is a formidable leader and exceptionally skilled in ‘making things happen’, extends my role and ensures that there's always somebody in charge present and in support of the team at the factory.
Piers and I can also benefit from the presence of Gil de Ferran, who works next to us as a consultant and further extends the leadership team's capacity: Piers, Gil, Daniel, myself, and all supported by Zak - even when it comes to leadership in Formula 1, it is not about a person, it is always about teamwork!
“We have proven that when we have clear, simple objectives, we get everyone aligned behind these objectives, and we work collaboratively, we can do exceptional things at McLaren.”
Andrea Stella
Team Principal
You’ve spoken regularly about the need to out-develop our competitors. What upgrades have we delivered so far, and how impressed have you been with the speed at which we’ve delivered them and their success?
The upgrades ultimately involved the entirety of the car’s aerodynamics. In this sense, I have referred to it as almost a B-Spec version of the MCL60. It involved some redesign of what is under the bodywork too, such as some of the mechanical layout, which needed to be adjusted to accommodate the new shapes of the car. Ultimately, in F1, we are in a race of upgrades, so this first round will be superseded rapidly by some new developments, which we have for this season, in parallel with the work ongoing on next year's car.
The first round of upgrades has delivered beyond our expectations. In our internal comms and debriefings, we've always said: ‘Towards the end of 2023, we would like to compete with some of the cars that are quicker at the moment.’ It’s mid-season, and we have already been able to score two podiums and a second place in a sprint race on merit.
This over-achievement is thanks to the people at McLaren that have been able to identify the concepts to evolve the car, plan it, design it, produce it, quality-check it, and bring it trackside, overcoming important logistical challenges. And to think, some of the upgrades were brought one race early, in Austria. We have proven that when we have clear, simple objectives, we get everyone aligned behind these objectives, and we work collaboratively, we can do exceptional things at McLaren.
What further upgrades can we expect later in the season?
The next round of upgrades will be a further development of the upgrades we took at previous races. There's still scope to go further, and we will attempt to do it. There are some encouraging indications in development, but, as always, the proof will be in the performance realised trackside.
We also need to do some more work specifically to address some of the weaknesses we had in Belgium. We had not done much work on the low drag configuration of the car, and in Belgium, we were lacking some efficiency and top speed. We want to do some urgent work on low drag, as part of a parallel smaller workstream to see if we can cash in some low-hanging fruits for Monza. This activity will be alongside what is the main development of the car, which will benefit us at the entirety of the tracks.
We've restructured our Technical Leadership team, which will see David Sanchez join from Ferrari and Rob Marshall from Red Bull in 2024. They haven’t been involved in any work so far, which has instead been led by existing team members, including Piers Thynne, Peter Prodromou, and Neil Houldey, among many others.
Considering we are still waiting for two key arrivals, how has the team restructure delivered so far?
The main objective Zak and I identified was to improve our on-track competitiveness by adding performance to the car. One of my initial tasks as Team Principal was to identify what kind of organisation and functional model we needed at McLaren to be able to fulfil this objective in the shortest time. Focus was particularly on the technical area where the car is designed. It soon became very apparent to us that Peter Prodromou was the person that needed to lead Aerodynamics.
Peter’s leadership has been exceptional since he has been given authority over aerodynamic development and reorganisation of the department. Not only have we addressed the right areas of the car with clarity from a development point of view, but we have also restructured the department, established a new ethos, and empowered the talent, of which we are very rich at McLaren. When walking the floor in the aerodynamic department now, you can perceive the energy of that group, which is something that we had not experienced for a long time. We need to pay credit to Peter because this has been done by him, supported by Giuseppe Pesce, the Director of Aerodynamics, and the rest of the Aerodynamic leadership team.
In a similar fashion, in the Design and Engineering department, we have worked to let dynamism and competence drive the way we approach collaborative car design. Design and Engineering is a very mature and outstanding group of individuals, and I am very pleased to see the quality of the work they could produce, working pretty much under constant pressure of time and technical challenges. Neil Houldey, Mark Ingham and their leadership structure have led the department with their unique experience, and this area will further be strengthened once Rob Marshall joins the team.
We have also looked into a rational and tailored organisation of the newly created Performance and Concept Direction team, which will be led by David Sanchez once he joins. In the meantime, Jonathan Marshall and Mark Temple have further stepped up in leading Vehicle Performance and Competitor Analysis, with a view to extracting the most out of the MCL60 and guiding the conceptual development of the 2024 car, in collaboration with other departments.
The description of the process in the technical area is just a visible example of what has happened at McLaren recently as we evolve the team and equip it with the standards required to fight at the front in F1.
But the reality is that throughout the entire team, everyone is stepping up and willing to play a part. We have shown what we are capable of at McLaren, but this is no reason for complacency. Conversely, this will give us additional determination to keep our feet on the ground and work on bringing our team the success McLaren deserves.
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