The product of Ferrari's F1 glory years seeking to repeat the trick at McLaren

It was an “acoustic trigger”, as he puts it, which lured Andrea Stella, a student of La Sapienza University in Rome, into the Formula 1 world. He had dreamed of being part of it since he
was a child, yet when the chance suddenly arose to work not just in Formula 1 but at Ferrari – Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari – Stella started to have second thoughts.

“The reason I studied engineering and in particular aerodynamics is because, yes, I was definitely very interested if not properly passionate about Formula 1 from my childhood,” he tells GP Racing. “So, I wanted to set my educational path in a way that I could be ready one day to join F1.

“I was working at the university for a PhD. And my tutor knew a guy at Ferrari who was looking to expand the test team. So this guy, his name is Luigi Mazzola, was in charge of the test team at the
time, and he asked the university to provide some names. So my tutor for the PhD provided mine. He knew I had this passion for F1. Ultimately it was the reason why I was studying aerodynamics, right? So, I entered this process of selection, and it was successful.

“But I have to admit that while I was at the university, studying aerodynamics and aircraft, I got passionate about aircraft too. So when the possibility to join Ferrari came, I had to really think, what do I want to do with my life?”

That Andrea Stella didn’t end up designing aeroplanes may well be a matter of random chance.

“After the second interview at Ferrari, I was walking away from the factory, I was still 50/50,” he smiles, “but there was the car testing in Fiorano. It was the V10 at the time. Very loud. And I heard this sound, and I thought, you know what, I think it’s 51 now in F1’s favour, I need to take it.”

Stella earned his PhD in Mechanical Engineering with an experimental study on the fluid dynamics of flames in 2000 and joined Ferrari immediately afterwards, accepting the position of test team performance engineer. Back then F1 squads still had entire departments just for testing, and Stella ended up working closely with Michael Schumacher – at the very start of Michael’s most successful period at Ferrari.

It was a dream opportunity, and a dream job.

It was always Stella's dream to work in F1, so to join as part of Ferrari's test team at the start of Schumacher's dominant era made it the perfect opportunity

Photo by: Daniel Kalisz

“I think I accepted the role because it was as a performance engineer,” he says. “It gives you the possibility to look at the car quite holistically. And ultimately, you deal with performance, influence the performance of the car while on track. So you have the double thing of understanding the car as a whole rather than in a specialist sectorial way, which is very attractive, and in addition to that you really understand the performance numbers. And you also understand the performance element associated with the interaction with the driver.

“To be honest, I think performance engineer in F1 is the best job in terms of... it’s just beautiful!”

On top of that, Stella was in the right place at the right time, with a genuine constellation of talent in place at Ferrari.

Then-Ferrari team principal Jean Todt would go on to have a lengthy tenure as FIA president, technical director Ross Brawn would serve as F1’s sporting boss, team manager Stefano Domenicali is now its CEO. Going over the F1 luminaries who’d worked at Ferrari in that period, it’s so easy to forget someone. Mattia Binotto, Simone Resta...

"When Michael spoke to me, he had a clear plan. You could see the leadership of this unbelievable person" Andrea Stella

“...Nikolas Tombazis, James Allison, Rory Byrne,” Stella adds.

Perhaps it’s a textbook example of strong individuals working together and making each other even stronger. You can see here the template for what Stella is now trying to bring together at McLaren.

“I think [it’s the case] when you remove some distractions, limitations associated with your ego, associated with your own ambitions, associated with some of these elements of human beings which are not functional,” he says. “When you work in a team. At that time [at Ferrari], it was possible to get rid of that, focus on your professional commitment. So [in such an environment] you get more out of yourself in the first place. And in the second place, you can collaborate very effectively with people from whom you can learn. And you can learn because sometimes they know more than you, or you can learn because of the collaboration that you instigate and which normally leads to a process of increasing know-how and expertise. But this also requires the cultural foundation.”

So it’s no exaggeration to say Stella had no shortage of role models to learn from at Ferrari. Including Schumacher. Michael was very much part of the decision to transfer the young engineer into the race team – and right away to Schumacher’s side of the garage.

As well as working with Schumacher at Ferrari, Stella also played a key role with Raikkonen and Alonso

Photo by: Andre Vor / Sutton Images

“I think it must have been a combination of what Michael had observed, but also what the management might have observed,” Stella says. “You need to be convinced on both ends to, you know, set the foundation in terms of supporting a driver like Michael for the years to come.

“It was certainly a challenge for me, pretty much a rookie engineer in a race team, picking up the role of performance engineer with the best driver, who is well-known to be not only very demanding, but also very accurate and very knowledgeable. So it was like, ‘Am I really going to be useful to this guy?’

“But I also remember well, when Michael spoke to me, he had a clear plan. You could see the leadership of this unbelievable person. You know, he was like, ‘Don’t worry, I want you here, we’ll learn together, I’ll be in the car driving, you’ll be in the car with me, but through the data, and through the information, and we’ll make it work’. These words I’ll never forget. And the situation itself I’ll never forget.

“Michael is an incredible team builder. Not only a team member, but a team builder, he’s the driver that created or contributed massively to create his own success at Ferrari. Because when he joined Ferrari, they were nowhere near ready to win. And year after year, they went closer and closer and closer to winning by building. So it’s not a driver who jumped in a quick car and was successful. He contributed to build the car that he drove to success. And my experience is simply an example of how it happened.”

As performance engineer in the race team, Andrea worked with three Ferrari drivers. After Schumacher came Kimi Raikkonen, who remains the driver to have brought Ferrari its last F1 title for now and with whom Stella switched to the race engineer position, and Fernando Alonso. The latter never did win a championship with Ferrari, though he came close twice. Nonetheless, it’s Fernando who served as catalyst for the next twist in Andrea’s career.

When Alonso moved to McLaren in 2015, Stella followed. Not so much to deliberately accompany Alonso, but just move in the same direction, wanting a new opportunity to make use of the experience he’d amassed.

“I wouldn’t say that Fernando’s move was the motivation, Fernando’s move was more of an opportunity,” explains Stella. “My move to McLaren happened because from a professional point of view, and a personal point of view, I thought that I wanted to expand, capitalise on what I’d learned so far, in a different way. I felt like I wanted a new experience, also looking at how you work in a different team. I felt it was the right time to move. And I left behind me phenomenal, beautiful memories of my experience at Ferrari, and I’m very grateful to Ferrari, that I had this opportunity.”

Stella joined McLaren in 2015 and despite a turbulent time during its failed Honda partnership he quickly rose through the ranks

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Stella joined McLaren at the beginning of 2015 as head of race operations, and at a time of great tumult. Honda’s struggles to find performance and reliability unfolded in parallel with a hidden problem – the team itself had lost its way in technical development but was unable or unwilling to recognise this, a mentality made possible by the engine issues. The ramifications would lead to change all the way to the top, with Zak Brown taking over from Ron Dennis.

Stella not only survived the turbulent era, but rose rapidly through the ranks – though he insists this was never a goal he’d set himself.

“Well, that’s not the way I think,” he says. “The way I think is... I do my job. I focus on it. It’s always been, if you want, professional opportunities coming to me, rather than me [chasing them]. Apart from the move from Ferrari to McLaren, I kind of have never asked, ‘I would like to do this’ – it’s always been, ‘Andrea, we would need this. Are you available?’

“Obviously, you want to have awareness of your present, you want to have awareness of what’s your past and the experience you’ve built. But my focus is always to just do a good job at what I’m doing. Everyone has aspirations. But for me, career has never been anything that attracts me. It’s not an aspiration for me.”

This winter, “Andrea, we need this. Are you available?” rang out yet again. Seidl’s departure from Woking created a vacancy Zak Brown wished to fill with an experienced insider

Stella first took up the performance director role in 2018, then ascended to racing director in 2019 under new team principal Andreas Seidl.

“In ’18, McLaren thought they needed to add a more organic approach to performance,” he explains. “There was a need to have a simple but clear assessment in terms of where we are from a performance point of view, and what’s needed to make steps forward. So the team decided that assigning the whole performance topic to a single person will be a good way of putting performance in order and set the foundation into the future. So then they asked me if I was available to take up this role. And I thought it was very interesting. Ultimately, performance is what I started with in Formula 1 and it’s still the thing I enjoy the most.

“Then, after Andreas and James Key joined the team, we thought we could move towards a very simple organisation, in which there are three fundamental functions: technical, manufacturing, and racing. One designs the car, one produces the car, one takes the car racing. And I was more than happy to pass part of my remit into technical and just take care of racing in the interest of having a simple and effective organisation.”

This winter, “Andrea, we need this. Are you available?” rang out yet again. Seidl’s departure from Woking created a vacancy Zak Brown wished to fill with an experienced insider.

With Seidl moving on, Stella accepted the request to step up once again at McLaren

Photo by: Jake Grant / Motorsport Images

“You know, my perspective into the winter was... it’s been a tough season, many races, I was looking forward to step back a little bit,” Stella recalls. “In racing, we have very strong leaders. We’ve worked together for a few years now, and I know I can step back for one week, and these leaders will carry on pushing. So, that was my setup towards winter: to back off, just a little bit.

“But then there was a call, or actually a WhatsApp message from Zak: ‘Andrea, do you have five minutes?’ On a Saturday morning. ‘Hm, that’s not right.’ He needed some reflections from my side. Ultimately, these reflections led me to think I should accept the proposal and just get all in on this. Like I said before, what’s important for me is what you do. I don’t worry about anything else.”

The task won’t be easy. McLaren finished fifth last year, performing clearly below its own expectations. Now the beginning of this season has proved disappointing, the car has obvious flaws, and technical director Key has gone in favour of a new management structure which Stella helped devise - which includes hiring veteran chief engineering officer Rob Marshall from Red Bull to be its new technical director. As with Ferrari’s return to greatness in the late 1990s, change and improvement are likely to be gradual and will take place under a high degree of pressure and critical scrutiny. Even if Andrea refuses to describe his first few months in the job as “stressful”, they’ve certainly proved busy.

“There’s no point in being stressed,” he smiles. “You just degrade your performance. If you want to work in F1, you need to live with it in a functional way. There’s no point in being stressed and just underperform, day after day. You just have to accept that there will be long hours, there will be situations that aren’t ideal. Also that while you have the aspiration and the whole team at McLaren have the aspiration in the future, to go to race weekends and fight for victories, at the moment that’s not what we’re at.

“But we accept it and analyse it. We identify the solution, and we work on it. So that’s my mindset. That’s my approach. And so far I would say it’s been interesting, intense, and, to some extent, enjoyable – because when I deal with chasing performance, I enjoy it.”

It’s not going to be easy, but one thing’s for sure – having had the experience of being part of one of the most dominant teams in F1 history, Stella knows what the view looks like at the top.

Can Stella oversee McLaren's latest recovery bid?

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images