It has been an impressive turnaround from McLaren in the last two years after the team turned up to the 2023 season with a slow and unreliable car.
McLaren faced an uphill struggle when they finished the opening races at the back of the grid, scoring a total of 16 points in the first eight races of 2023.
Things started to turn around when Lando Norris finished fourth in Austria, and then achieved back-to-back podiums between the British and Hungarian Grands Prix. Although McLaren had no chance of outpacing the superior RB20, they carried a lot of their momentum into 2024.
The MCL38 immediately hit the ground running in 2024, with Norris and Oscar Piastri finishing in the points at every race apart from Miami (Piastri) and Austria (Norris). Their consistency effectively sealed their first Constructors’ Championship since 1998, with Norris becoming McLaren’s top points scorer.
A lot of McLaren success can be attributed to the backroom staff changes they made at the start of last year, with Andrea Stella taking over from Andrea Seidl as team principal. Discussing the changes on the Sky Sports F1 podcast, journalist Ted Kravitz admitted he was surprised at the decision.
Ted Kravitz explains why he was ‘surprised’ by Andrea Stella becoming team principal at McLaren
Stella has been in F1 for over 20 years, having first started out at Ferrari and later joining McLaren when Fernando Alonso moved to the team in 2015.
Kravtiz admitted he was surprised when he saw Stella take on the role, considering his background is more in engineering than team management.
“He’d [Stella] never been a team principal of any team before, so coming in it was a bit of a surprise. We all thought ‘Ok, this is one of the biggest teams in F1, he’s never been a team principal’,” said Kravitz.
Former driver Luciano Burti praised Stella for his engineering ability while he was at Ferrari as a test driver, while Norris’ engineer Will Joseph explained why the appointment to team principal made sense at McLaren.
“He knew the team, he knew the team and knew already what to do to extract the best from the team,” explained Joseph.
“It didn’t take someone else to come in and learn about the people and the environment over two years, he was immediately able to accelerate the team on the path we needed to take.”
Andrea Stella made important backroom staff change that ‘unleashed’ one former Red Bull designer
McLaren’s consistency this year has stemmed from giving their drivers a car that is reliable and easy to drive, which was down to a key backroom staff change.
Stella promoted Peter Prodromou within the design team, as well as poaching Rob Marshall who has been credited with giving them the ‘secret sauce’ from Red Bull.
READ MORE: All you need to know about McLaren F1 Team from team principal to engine
The result has been a much more streamlined effort in the design team, with parts often adding performance when they are brought to the track.
McLaren’s advantage is likely to continue throughout the 2025 season, as next year’s challenger will be an evolution of the MCL38. Nico Rosberg expects Lando Norris to be the favourite for the title next year, while Tim Coronel warns Max Verstappen could be out of energy after this year’s struggles.
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