The unassuming leader who is one of F1 2023’s true stars

When people say you should never mess with the quiet ones, it isn’t because they have things to hide. Instead, it’s the very fact that rather than being loud, they are listening, observing, planning and getting on with things without fanfare that makes them such formidable weapons. It’s something that certainly appears to be true for McLaren this season, as its softly spoken and unassuming new team principal Andrea Stella appears to have unleashed something truly sensational in a short period of time.

When Stella was promoted to the job over the winter in the wake of Andreas Seidl's departure, it was a fairly surprising appointment because the Italian did not seem to be someone that craved the spotlight. He was never especially eager to put himself in front of the media and certainly seemed to be a world away from the type of pantomime personalities that Netflix has helped create for many of his peers.

But the perception outside of McLaren was a world away from the views of Stella’s skills within it – which explains why CEO Zak Brown had no hesitation in getting him to step up and take charge of the F1 team when the opportunity came up. Quiet in public he may have been but, having stepped up from head of race operations to performance director in 2018 and then racing director a year later, he had been integral in helping the squad produce the 2020 MCL35 that went on to secure McLaren third in the constructors’ championship. That was effectively the baseline for the race-winning 2021 MCL35M, which used all its development tokens to switch from Renault to Mercedes engines.

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When McLaren failed to build on its momentum into 2022, and then seemed to have no answers during the season as to how it was going to turn things around, from Brown’s perspective it was clear that something had to change. There was a feeling that the team was not getting the most out of its aero chief Peter Prodromou, and that its structure was not fit for purpose. There seemed to be a lack of leadership, direction and ambition to plot a path back to the front of F1.

So, when Seidl told Brown that he had agreed to join Audi for 2026, the wheels were set in motion for his exit to be fast-tracked – and Stella to be shifted up and tasked with a thorough review of everything that was going on inside the team. The conclusions from that review were the need to restructure the organisation, change direction with the car concept and, according to one source, ‘get the elbows and chequebooks out’ to hire the right people to get back to the front.

Fast forward to now and the results of Stella’s action plan have been immense. From having started the season in Bahrain with one of the slowest cars, McLaren's efforts have produced perhaps an even more dramatic change of fortunes than that Aston Martin achieved over the winter. The team was Red Bull’s closest challenger at the British Grand Prix, after all.

McLaren was the second-fastest F1 team at the British GP - having been one of the slowest in the season opener in March

Photo by: James Sutton / Motorsport Images

But while the car and its pace have dramatically changed, one thing that hasn’t is Stella’s personality – he remains that same quiet, driven man he has always been. For example, asked after the British Grand Prix about all he had achieved this year, his first response was not to take credit but rather to praise others.

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“You know, for me, my focus is just doing the right things,” he said. “Just focus on performance, focus on creating a vision for the team, making sure that everyone understands what the vision is, and what the direction is.

“The most important thing is that you don't do these things alone. I've been very, very well supported. And even the collaboration with Zak has been incredibly close and strategic. It will be a mistake to say, ‘I’, or ‘you’. It's group work, even when it comes to the leadership. An F1 team is too complex to think that somebody alone can turn a situation around, and not recognise the people that [are] part of this journey.”

Despite its brilliant performance at the British GP, McLaren insists that its road map in F1 remains unchanged: battle for podiums in F1 in 2024 and then fight for wins the following year

But behind the quiet exterior is a steely determination to execute what needs to be done for the greater good. The elbows and chequebooks have been used to good effect, with the team getting its hands on David Sanchez from Ferrari and Rob Marshall from Red Bull at the start of 2024, when their gardening leave periods will be over. They are to form part of a three-man technical team alongside highly-rated aerodynamicist Prodromou.

It was Stella’s conviction in having a triumvirate to oversee the technical aspects of the car that meant former technical director James Key - now bound for Sauber to reunite with Seidl - was surplus to requirements. There was no room for sentimentality.

“We wanted to establish a different model, from a technical point of view, based on distributing the aerodynamic, car concept and performance, and the engineering and design function in three different areas,” he explained. “This is just a different way of working. It doesn't have to do with somebody in particular, it just requires a bit more of a distributed model when it comes to the technical organisation. So that was the rationale.

“If we talk about the leadership that contributed to the change, I want to praise all the people that work with me - Piers Thynne, the chief operating officer, and Daniel Gallo, chief people officer - and then certainly all of this under the coordination and the strategic input from Zak. So, it’s teamwork.”

McLaren hopes its British GP podium is the latest step in a charge towards the front

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Despite its brilliant performance at the British GP, McLaren insists that its road map in F1 remains unchanged: battle for podiums in F1 in 2024, then fight for wins the following year. And it says much about Stella’s character that he is not getting carried away with one result, nor getting ready to start making outlandish predictions about what can be achieved now.

“By nature, I don't necessarily think about the destination,” he smiles when asked if Silverstone marked the start of a great new era for McLaren. “I just think about what we have to put in place to keep improving. The way we [talk about it] internally is to let the results come to us. We just have to focus on what we need to do at a technical level, at a sporting level, at a financial level. That's our mindset.”

Under Stella, McLaren is quietly moving forwards. And that’s exactly why its rivals had better watch out.

Stella has got McLaren back on track with its targets, but what heights can he lead the team to?

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images