Why McLaren’s low profile F1 gem was its number one team boss choice

As the dust settles on this week’s remarkable Formula 1 team boss merry-go-round, there is one figure who has emerged as a surprise new entrant to the club. While Fred Vasseur was always favourite to replace Mattia Binotto at Ferrari, and Andreas Seidl would be on the wish list of any F1 squad, it is Andrea Stella’s promotion at McLaren that caught everyone on the hop.

But while few outside of McLaren would have anticipated racing director Stella as being an automatic candidate for the role of team principal, the squad’s CEO Zak Brown was clear that he never considered anyone else for the role.

“What was of high interest to me and the shareholders was to have someone leading the team that gets their hands dirty,” he said. “Someone that knew the team inside out; a very hands-on person in the racing team.”

Brown’s conviction has come from the squad recognising Stella's input to the internal restructuring and rebuilding that helped lift McLaren from the doldrums at the depth of its second spell with Honda, to a team that won as recently as last year.

Indeed, it was well before that famous Monza win that outgoing McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl singled out Stella and then colleague, but now Alpine chief technical officer Pat Fry, as being the instrumental figures in driving the much-needed change within McLaren.

“What is important to mention is that Andrea together with Pat played a key role in making these changes happen,” Seidl said when talking about that big step McLaren made in 2019. “One thing is to understand what the issues are, and then the second thing is that you need people that lead that - and it was clear with the changes that Zak initiated last year, putting Andrea and Pat in charge in this interim period and in charge of the car, making sure the right convictions get transferred in this year's car, that [the 2019 car] was the result.”

The contrast between the conviction within McLaren about Stella’s strengths and his relative obscurity in the wider world is partly explained by the Italian’s quiet personality. He is not someone who seeks out the television cameras for pitlane interviews to make himself a personality. And he is not someone who likes to talk up his own contribution to successes achieved through the input of many people.

Andrea Stella, Race Engineer, McLaren, with Andreas Seidl, Team Principal, McLaren

In fact, he is a very humble individual and prefers a life well away from unnecessary attention. For Stella, it’s better to simply be left alone to get on with his work in making a team and car better. But while such obscurity can be easy to arrange for senior engineer figures, it is not something so achievable for such a high profile role as a team principal.

The modern job of being a boss is very much to act as the shop window of the team, to explain what’s gone right and wrong, to help steer agendas in your direction and make sure that whatever narrative is out there is one that suits your squad and its backers.

Speaking to the media on Tuesday, Stella confessed that needing to be more in the spotlight was an element he had had to consider after being offered the team principal role.

“Certainly the outside elements of the team principal job, that’s something that I needed to reflect on,” he said. “I’ve been reluctant, I just focused on my job. That was my focus. So it needed a bit of thought, but I guess it’s also about preparation. It’s also about getting familiar, being honest. I think we are up for the challenge.”

Where perhaps the combination of Brown and Stella will work well is that their strengths and focuses can be in very different areas. Brown can think of the big picture and the global image; Stella can be left alone to focus on the details and the marginal gains to help drive McLaren forwards

Were Stella thrust into the public team boss position alone then it would be quite a big contrast to what’s gone on before. However, the transition on that front will be much easier for him because he will be working directly alongside CEO Zak Brown – who is well versed in the media, is comfortable speaking to the television cameras and journalists, and is a good paddock operator.

Brown himself is ready to get hands-on and offer any assistance he can in areas where Stella is playing catch up. He said: “I'll certainly lean in more where Andrea would like my support, obviously, in the TP role. There's the sporting side, and kind of the commercial side and the media, etc. And I think we'll find good ways of working together.”

Where perhaps the combination of Brown and Stella will work well is that their strengths and focuses can be in very different areas. Brown can think of the big picture and the global image; Stella can be left alone to focus on the details and the marginal gains to help drive McLaren forwards. It’s something Stella concurs with.

Andrea Stella

“I think my style will be as a hands-on kind of team principal,” he said. “I’ve been dealing with, and exposed to, the engineering and racing elements of Formula 1 throughout my career, so I will be close to the core objectives of the team, which ultimately are to build a quick car, and race this car effectively while on track. If I may say, I think there’s really strong elements of integration and combination between my characteristics and Zak's. I think it’s clear it’s a very strong combination.”

This also means that, while Stella is stepping up from the racing director role to be team principal, he does not envisage a massive overhaul in the way things have run at the track: “I think it's important to retain continuity there in terms of the way we go racing trackside,” he added. “So I would certainly see my presence and my impact still being quite direct in relation to that. Here, on the factory side, we have senior leaders I will be able to rely on and I think some of them will step up a little bit, such that we can cover all the tasks required to run the business. But certainly at the same time, which is a challenge in more than Formula 1, I do plan to be very present, very impactful, on the factory side. But how do we configure this? It will require some thinking.”

Perhaps the most potent strength that Stella has is his worldly experience in F1, and the variety of people he has worked under and learned from. He cut his teeth in F1 at the Jean Todt-era Ferrari, rising through the ranks to help engineer Michael Schumacher. Then, under Stefano Domenicali, he worked with Kimi Raikkonen and, perhaps most famously, Fernando Alonso.

He switched to McLaren in 2015, and after initially working under Eric Boullier, he formed a strong partnership with Seidl. As someone who has great attention to detail, the chance to observe how the likes of Todt, Domenicali, Boullier and Seidl all operated in their own ways could prove to be invaluable if he is to make a success of his McLaren spell.

“You learn from anybody,” he said. “I think for me, that’s a very strong philosophy, especially when you can work together with strong personalities, very capable people. There’s a lot to learn. First of all, Jean Todt: his incredible dedication to the team and to his role. I think it’s something that gave me a bit of an imprinting about what it means to be committed. I think that’s overall an early imprinting of my career in Formula 1, having had the privilege to work in such a successful environment as the Ferrari 2000s. As for Stefano, I think Stefano is definitely a people person. Formula 1 is about engineering operations, but is ultimately very much about people.

“So I think from Stefano, I understood some elements and qualities that you need to be highly regarded as a team principal, and also some ways of interacting with people based on respect, listening, and, I think, managing your ego somehow. And Andreas, we worked if anything more closely. I think he also brought some engineering knowledge from previous experiences, so this was very useful for me in terms of shaping up the race team, making progress in some areas like pit stops.

“So I think what I’m taking from collaborating with Andreas is the importance of knowing the business; the importance of knowing even the technical and engineering aspects, such that you can coach people, you can support people in a more effective way to make progress.”

And it’s that progress that is exactly what McLaren is hoping Stella can bring to the party, as he steps up to the challenge of the biggest role of his career.

Technical artist Giorgio Piola chats with Andrea Stella