McLaren has improved significantly since Andrea Stella took over as Team Principal – CEO Zak Brown explains what makes the Italian tick
In 2022, McLaren was still well behind the top Formula 1 teams and finished fifth in the constructors’ championship. This season, the team from Woking is battling Red Bull for the title: ahead of the final ten races, McLaren is just 42 points behind the industry leaders.
McLaren CEO Zak Brown also attributes the fact that the team is in this position to the progress that Andrea Stella has made since taking over as Team Principal from Andreas Seidl in December 2022.
“He has unleashed the talent we already had here,” says Brown in an interview with the BBC. “We have about 1,000 people here in Formula 1. I’ve replaced three. But it was three managers. So 997 are the same people who gave us the car at the start of 2023.”
This was still struggling with design flaws from 2022, but the first major update in mid-2023 took the car from the lower midfield to the leading group behind Red Bull, where they competed with Ferrari and Mercedes for the rest of the season.
This year, things are going even better: starting the season as the third fastest car, an extensive upgrade in Miami has catapulted the team on a par with Red Bull.
Brown on Stella: “He leads by example “
Brown explains how this was possible: “The job of a leader is to get the best out of his people and we didn’t have that before. We weren’t able to bring out the talent we have here.”
“Andrea communicates very well. He listens very well. He works very hard. He is very technical. He leads by example. All the qualities you want in a great leader. He has unlocked the potential of this team that was obviously already there,” summarizes McLaren CEO.
Stella has been with McLaren since 2015, getting to know the team from the inside for many years before finally being promoted to Team Principal eight years later. In this context, Brown reveals that he offered Stella the position earlier.
“To be honest, I offered it to him the first time and he turned it down. He didn’t feel ready. Andrea is someone who knows his capabilities and doesn’t overreach.”
“The second time, he knew me better, knew the team better, even though he had been here for a while. And yet he didn’t say yes straight away on the first call. It took a few days because he’s very methodical, very deliberate,” Brown continued.
Brown initially shocked by McLaren
He himself joined McLaren as Managing Director in 2016. At the time, he recalls, he was somewhat shocked by the situation. “It was worse than I thought,” he says.
“We were ninth in the championship. The race car was totally bare on the outside, I think three sponsors. We had disgruntled fans, disgruntled racers and a pretty battered race team. It was pretty scary.”
Brown’s first steps were to sort out the financial side: “The team needed resources because we were losing a lot of money to be able to invest in drivers, technology and staff.” From then on, things moved steadily forward, including the engine switch from Honda to Renault and then Mercedes.
In 2022, however, Brown felt “that we were stagnating,” he says, looking back. “I put Andrea in the lead. He reorganized a little – a little more than a little – did a great job, mobilized the team, and we’ve been on the road to success ever since. But there will still be a few potholes along the way. “
