Indy 500 winner de Ferran returns to McLaren F1 as consultant

Following the winter departure of team principal Andreas Seidl, who is now CEO of Sauber, his replacement Andrea Stella led a full review of the operation in conjunction with boss Zak Brown.

This resulted in an overhaul of the technical department, with director James Key jettisoned in favour of a new three-pronged leadership structure featuring Ferrari head of vehicle concept David Sanchez.

Two-time Champ Car champion de Ferran, who worked with Stella at the team between 2018 and 2020, has now returned to McLaren as an advisor as part of the next phase of the reorganisation.

Asked by Autosport to explain de Ferran’s role, Stella said: “Gil is essentially a consultant, so non-operational, non-executive and that's a role as a consultant to myself and to Piers [Thynne, the newly appointed McLaren Racing COO].”

Indy 500 winner Gil de Ferran, Penske-Toyota

Photo by: Michael L. Levitt / Motorsport Images

Stella added that de Ferran, who is working with the team during the Miami Grand Prix weekend, will support the existing top brass with the expanded regulatory framework that now includes the cost cap.

“We thought that Gil, with us during this process, during this journey, would add horsepower from a leadership point of view,” said Stella. “Gil is not only very knowledgeable about racing, but is definitely strong in identifying talent, supporting talent.

“He's a great coach, is a quite brilliant strategic thinker and you can talk to Gil more as an engineer than as a driver actually.

“To be honest, I'm not sure how he developed so much technical knowledge. He is a brilliant person that we want to have alongside.

“We have already proven in the past that this can be a very successful team having Gil on board, like in 2018, for instance, when we were able to turn a difficult situation at McLaren around [rising from ninth in the constructors’ championship in 2017 to third come de Ferran's departure.

“It was actually the lowest point in the history of McLaren and in the space of a few months, we set the direction for then being more successful in the years to come.”

McLaren has also overhauled its young driver development programme and appointed five-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner Emanuele Pirro as its leader, with the Italian subsequently losing his role as an F1 driver steward for the FIA.

Stella said of the reshuffle: “The process of innovation and evolution that we have started at McLaren had some priorities that we identified relatively quickly. They had to do with the technical area.

“But when you start to look into a Formula 1 team, that's a very complex entity.

“One element that we also wanted to address is that we want to have enough capacity at the leadership level to look into all the opportunities that you have.”