Formula 1 drivers usually get the praise for any positive result during a Grand Prix, but it is a team game and it is those behind the scenes that often make the difference.
McLaren has emerged as a potential title contender after big turnaround in the last 12 months.
Lando Norris achieved his first race win and McLaren’s first since 2021 at the Miami Grand Prix, while Oscar Piastri has shown his potential at numerous races this year.
Key to their turnaround has been Italian engineer Andrea Stella. After Andreas Seidl left the team at the end of 2022 to become the chief executive officer of Sauber, Stella took over to become team principal of the Woking outfit.
Since then the team has been on an upward trajectory, with Stella responsible for streamlining their technical team and bringing in engineering talent from Red Bull and Ferrari.
Prior to joining McLaren, Stella held engineering roles at Ferrari where he was part of four Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships at the height of Micheal Schumacher’s dominance in 2002 and 2004 and later Kimi Raikkonen’s title-winning year in 2007. He also worked as Fernando Alonso’s race engineer in the latter part of his Ferrari tenure.
Former F1 driver Luciano Burti, who tested for Ferrari between 2002 and 2004, explained to the Beyond the Grid podcast his impact on the engineering side.
READ MORE: Everything you need to know about McLaren F1 Team from team principal to engine
Luciano Burti praises Andrea Stella’s engineering ability
Burti had a race seat in F1 with Prost and Jaguar Racing before suffering a big crash at the 2001 Belgian Grand Prix that forced him to sit out the remainder of the season.
The Brazilian driver subsequently went into test driver roles with various teams, including Ferrari and BMW, and worked with Stella at the Italian team.
“Andrea was one of those guys that I worked with in Ferrari that I said ‘Man, I had no idea that those kinds of engineers existed?’
“He was a data engineer for Michael [Schumacher] but he was with me testing sometimes and he was so good in the data that I asked him sometimes ‘Hey, were you in the car with me in that car? How do you know? Just that little mistake that I’ve made, how do you know that?’
“So he was so good and also such a nice person to be dealing with. He was one guy that helped me. Maybe he doesn’t know that, but he was a guy who helped me to feel good about being in F1 and working with the team.”
Andrea Stella earns praise among F1 paddock
Burti is not the only one to recognise Stella’s impact in a team, 1996 World Champion Damon Hill also praised the ‘perfect’ work done by Stella behind the scenes after their success at Imola.
McLaren CEO Zak Brown also praised Stella in the aftermath of Norris’ first win at Miami, highlighting the Italian’s leadership qualities, communication and high performance as key factors to their recent success.
Not only does McLaren appear to have one of the quickest cars on the grid, but they have secured the future of their drivers in what is a very active driver market for 2025.
The team currently sits third in the Constructors’ Championship 107 points off Red Bull, but Norris is only 169 points away from Max Verstappen in the Drivers’ Championship.
The post ‘Could be in the car’: Former F1 driver shares what makes McLaren boss Andrea Stella so good at his job appeared first on F1 Oversteer.
