McLaren’s F1 turnaround relied on an unlikely catalyst: New boss Andrea Stella
The contrast between Lando Norris’s demeanor after the first and the last Formula One race of 2023 was stark.
In Bahrain, Norris only qualified 11th before enduring a miserable race where a pneumatic leak forced him to pit every 10 laps to have his pressures topped up. After six stops, McLaren called the race and retired the car. Norris joked that plenty of practice for the pit crew was the only positive to take away.
Fast forward to Abu Dhabi. With a fuss-free run to fifth place, Norris equaled his worst result since Singapore, so strong was his late-season form. He missed out on fourth in the championship by a single point and scored more P2s than any other driver in 2023.
“If we were in Bahrain now, and I looked ahead, I was, like, dreading the season already,” Norris admitted.
“To come away with seven podiums and all the great moments we had, they were definitely not expected. I’ve got to thank the team for that.”
McLaren’s resurgence was one of F1’s biggest shocks in 2023. One of the sport’s most storied, successful teams looked bound for a rough season. At the car’s launch, the team freely admitted that it had missed its preseason development targets. McLaren risked sliding into midfield anonymity as Aston Martin leaped into F1’s lead pack.
It ended the year, arguably, with F1’s second-fastest car, only trailing the dominant Red Bull. Norris continued to prove his credentials as a future champion, spearheading McLaren’s efforts to return to the front. Ever his own harshest critic holding himself to an impossibly high standard, Norris was one of the few drivers to take much of a fight to Max Verstappen this season, even if it always ended in defeat.
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His new teammate, Oscar Piastri, the youngster the team fought so hard to sign, justified every penny spent paying out Daniel Ricciardo’s contract. He delivered the best rookie campaign since Lewis Hamilton in 2007 and impressed everyone with his calm, mature approach for a 22-year-old. The contractual tug-of-war that put him under a cloud last year was long forgotten.
“For us to catch Mercedes, for us to catch Ferrari in terms of pace — we’ve been behind them for two years,” Norris said. “I think it’s a good time for us.”
The catalyst for that good time was Andrea Stella, who, in his first year as team principal, brought about necessary change for McLaren that can lay the foundations for an even brighter future.
The 2022 season disappointed McLaren’s senior management group, led by CEO Zak Brown. Beyond the drop to fifth in the championship, Brown didn’t like the team’s direction. When team principal Andreas Seidl departed for Sauber to head up preparations for Audi’s arrival in 2026, the appointment of Stella was a straightforward decision for Brown, who came to an agreement with the Italian off a single phone call.
The decision paid off handsomely. Brown identified Stella’s influence as crucial to arresting the team’s slide and sparking the upswing.
“It’s the same people, but it’s a different team,” Brown said. “It’s a different team because of the leadership of Andrea.”
When the MCL60’s shortcomings became apparent early in the season, Stella quickly identified the need for change within McLaren and instigated a new technical leadership structure. James Key departed as technical director and was replaced by a triumvirate that split duties into three areas: aerodynamics, car concept and performance, and engineering and design.
Stella encouraged a shift in the way the team designed the car. He wanted technical groups to be more focused on making a single area, such as the rear wing, the best it could be instead of dwelling on compromises, a style thought to be closer to Red Bull’s philosophy.
The changes bore fruit when the team’s first significant car upgrade arrived in Austria. Norris finished fourth, and the weekend marked the turning point in McLaren’s season. The team scored 17 points in the eight races prior, an average of 2.1 per weekend. In the next 14, it scored 285 — more than Aston Martin managed all season — and upped its rate to 20.4.
“(It’s) the same people that gave us the car for Bahrain that have given us the car the second half of the year,” Brown said. “The only difference is a new team principal, a new technical director structure, and a new head of aero.”
Externally, Stella seemed an unlikely figure to take the reins at McLaren. He joined the team in 2015 to oversee its race operations, rising to the role of racing director in 2019. While a popular figure behind the scenes with excellent soft skills to match his technical capabilities, he was hardly public-facing. Media activities weren’t his favorite way to spend time.
But he embraced every aspect of the team principal role. He continued to apply his strong technical skills and give clear, concise direction. Mindsets shifted away from dwelling on McLaren’s technical deficits, such as the lack of an in-house wind tunnel, and instead turned to making the best of what the team had. Human performance became a fresh point of focus.
Because to Stella, F1 is about people. “It’s a highly professional business, highly competitive, but it’s run by humans and executed by humans,” he explained in October. “The foundations as to how you generate the positive feelings, the positive state of mind, in which people offer their best, they have to do with humans.
“Showing and proving confidence, proving the confidence, proving the trust, proving the belief, proving the spirit of being mates in this journey of McLaren toward winning races in the future — they are fundamentals. We want to leverage performance on these fundamentals.”
Making an F1 team successful goes beyond being a ‘nice guy.’ But Brown knew Stella had the skills and steel to back it up.
“I call him ‘The Swan’,” Brown said. “He looks like a nice guy, cruising above the water, but underneath, he’s paddling fast. He’s very tough, he’s very professional, very articulate in his delivery. He’s not political at all. He’s not got an ego at all.”
Was Brown surprised by Stella this year? “I think yes, I’m pleasantly surprised,” he said. “Not at what he’s brought to the table, but how quickly he’s had the impact that he’s had because I think we all see that the turnaround has been pretty awesome.”
Norris described Stella as “the producer of the set, and everyone else is the cast. You need everyone to work together very well. That’s what they’re doing. He’s done an amazing job.
“I’m very happy having him where he is. I couldn’t ask for a better team principal.”
Now that McLaren has caught up with Ferrari and Mercedes, the goal next year is to sustain it through the season — and try to bridge the gap to Red Bull at the front.
Norris and Piastri got close to Max Verstappen on occasion through the latter half of the year, scoring double podiums in Japan and Qatar — where Piastri won the sprint race, and Norris was one corner away from pole — as the high-speed tracks played to the strengths of the car. The big unknown is how others have worked in the background to develop for 2024.
“We know we’ve closed the gap to Red Bull,” Brown said. “What we don’t know is, have they been standing still? Have they been jogging? Have they been running as hard? I don’t think we’re going to know that until next year.”
But Stella will focus on making the best of the present, never thinking too far ahead. Even as the team closed on Aston Martin in the season’s closing stages, its ascension to P4 an inevitability, Stella never seemed to get too ahead of himself.
“I don’t look how far we can go,” Stella said before Piastri’s sprint win in Qatar. “I just look (at) what do we have to do now to go as far as possible?”
It’s a mantra that’s served McLaren well through 2023 and fueled its fightback. Now, it’s about turning that into longer-term success.
(Lead image: Gongora/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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Luke Smith is a Senior Writer covering Formula 1 for The Athletic. Luke has spent 10 years reporting on Formula 1 for outlets including Autosport, The New York Times and NBC Sports, and is also a published author. He is a graduate of University College London. Follow Luke on Twitter @LukeSmithF1
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Jeremiah S.
· Tue
Absolutely brilliant. As a newer fan to F1, I've mostly been focused on drivers and just enjoying the races... But this season, I really started to take a shine to McLaren as a team. Might even find myself wearing some Papaya Orange this next season!
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Scott B.
· Tue
Strangely, this article omits Peter Prodromou, who was second-in-command to James Key in aero. Key was replaced by Prodromou in late March, at which point, the car started to develop. Original design = Key. Improvements = Prodromou. I've read that Stella is an engineer's manager - and it shows. Much like Ross Brown or Steve Jobs, it is not what you know, it is how you unlock it from your co-workers. Info is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Prodromou
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Key_(Formula_One)
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Chris L.
· Tue
Luke, you highlight Red Bull as a contrast with McLaren's new "shared" technical leadership. Is that a coincidence because Red Bull is currently the benchmark, or a subtle nod to the Adrian Newey-McLaren breakup that shifted the F1 universe circa 2002?
(Newey left McLaren and joined the fledgling RB because of a feud with Ron Dennis. McLaren restructured the engineering division to diminish Newey's influence, installing an authority set-up that sounds remarkably similar to what Brown is doing now, only to knock the team from championship contention and begin the McLaren collapse).
It's like our broken hero has gone rummaging the basement vault, only to find the cursed gun he used to shoot himself in the foot all those years ago.
Good lord, it's too strange.
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